Longest April Ever

It started off innocuously enough on the first Sunday in April when George started a little dry cough. He felt fine otherwise and didn’t think it was anything, but I didn’t like the sound of it. It was dry but deep, and not quite like any cough I’d heard before. George had also been informed on Friday that he’d been exposed at work, several of his patients had turned out to test positive for COVID. On Monday morning when we awoke, George was feeling a little off. He had no fever (yet) and was just feeling kind of meh. Fortunately it was raining hard, which made it easy for him to decide to stay home. Fearing what this might turn out to be, I decided I should stay home too. Good call. As that day wore on, George’s temperature climbed 2 degrees and would remain there the next two days, despite Tylenol. He experienced some chills and aches, but fortunately maintained a normal appetite and felt well enough to get out of bed and come downstairs most of the day.

Drive-thru COVID test site

Fortunately, LA County was (and continues to be) very proactive in making testing available, and on Tuesday, we were able to get a Wednesday morning appointment for a free COVID test at a drive-thru location very near our house. At the testing site, we waited a little over a half hour in a line of cars. The test itself was quick and easy, self-administered by swabbing his cheeks and roof of mouth. But then the long wait for results, which wouldn’t come until the weekend. Before we got George’s lab test results, we got a different sort of confirmation.

To that point, I had been feeling fine, but Wednesday night, I spiked a fever 5 degrees over normal. Tylenol brought it down a little, but I remained 3-5 degrees over normal the next 36 hours, with achy joints, angry sinuses, and bouts of shivering chills. A couple of nights the fever got high enough that my body went into preservation mode, circulation restricted to head and torso while I could feel my arms and legs going numb. That was frankly a bit terrifying. I’d only felt something similar to that creeping numbness once before, and that was when I had a heart attack. But I got through those two nights, and by Friday my temp was back down closer to normal. I remember waking up Friday morning thinking “It’s light out. I’m breathing. Can I breathe deeply? Yes. Shivering or sweating? No. Still feel hands and feet? Yes,” and saying a little prayer of gratitude. Just seeing another day break and taking another breath were suddenly things we no longer took for granted.

That first week we thought about breathing a lot. We knew this thing attacked the lungs. Avoid sleeping on your back, we heard. Practice breathing deeply, a doctor on YouTube advised, with an exercise of breathing in 5 beats, holding 5 beats, and exhaling 5 beats that I took up like religious devotion. We both felt an uneasy heaviness in our chests, and on Thursday George felt a strange tightness too, almost like he’d pulled a muscle in his chest. We both were still capable of deep breath, but we stopped taking it for granted and wondered if it might suddenly stop. George also lost his sense of taste and smell, which we’d been hearing was also associated with COVID. Though we were still awaiting test results (I’d done a similar drive-thru at the Rose Bowl a couple days after my symptoms began), at this point we pretty much knew what the tests would tell us. When we each got our positive results four or five days after our tests, it only confirmed what we already knew.

The next week we had fluctuating mild fevers and slept more than usual, but ate normally, and were up and about the house during the day. The positive test results came with some information that reassured us that 80% of people recover from COVID at home, so we took some hope in that. At the same time, I was reading every bit of info I could find about this novel virus, and was seeing too many stories of people who had only mild symptoms for the first week or more, only to experience sudden and sharp downturns. So there was the quiet terror of so much being unknown about this disease that took away the comfort of our actually relatively mild experience. As with all new pandemics, there is a desperation in the beginning to find something, anything, that works, and a lot of fleeting hopes and constantly changing information. Everybody in New York is taking this anti-malaria drug, and it seems to be working! Oh wait, no, maybe the side effects are worse and the “cure” was an anecdotal mirage. Take Advil to control your fever! Oh wait, now the French are reporting that Advil may have adverse effects with COVID, avoid the Advil, take Tylenol instead! It’s dizzying, dismaying, and desperate. It’s easy to see why people jump on rumors and hopeful but unreliable promises. We didn’t jump on anything exotic, but we did go for things like Tylenol, Mucinex, extra Vitamin C, and tonic water which were clearly safe even if questionably effective. We also heard that viral load was a concern, and that even though we were both already sick, it was possible we could make each other worse. So I decamped to the guest room and we spent our isolation in separate bedrooms and bathrooms. (Among the small terrors: we only had one working thermometer which was both essential and a path for increasing viral load being shared. We ended up keeping a small vial of alcohol next to the thermometer so it could be immersed before and after every use.)

Isolation was its own challenge. Prior to being sick, we had been staying “safer at home” like everyone else, but now we were strictly isolating. It may sound like a subtle difference, but it’s not. It’s the difference between being independent and being dependent. Previously, we’d been able to go to the store or go to restaurants to pick up food. Now we were at the mercy of others to bring us anything we needed. We’re so conditioned to be independent, to be reluctant to ask for help, even from close friends. But isolation gives you no choice, and we had to overcome that reluctance and ask for help. It turns out that during a pandemic, there are some things that even Amazon Prime can’t get for you when you need it. But good friends will go to three stores just to find the last bottles of Mucinex on the shelves, or offer to airlift us Tylenol from a secret stash in New Jersey, or send us a crate of Gatorade from Sacramento, or pick us up a farm box and bring it to our porch. We are very grateful to be blessed with such good friends who were more than happy to do all these things for us.

The third week was mostly a blur. COVID, at least as we experienced it, doesn’t give you any clean fever break moment where you know you’re better. It’s just a long slow slog. Temperatures still oscillated, though in a milder range, and we were able to do some light activity. We took a few light neighborhood walks, though we’d tire before going as far as we normally would. I did some light yoga. George did some light yardwork. I wish I could say I watched the AFI top 100 films, learned to bake bread, and learned to speak Chinese, but none of that happened. We watched very little on screens. Rather, we found a Zen-like appreciation of just watching the birds, bees, and butterflies in our backyard. A couple days I sat so still for so long on our stone bench that the birds stopped worrying about me and took baths in the fountain just a couple feet away from me.

The fourth week we were feeling 90% better, and had this been a normal flu bug, we’d have been back at work in “fake it till you make it” mode. But now we had another concern. How do we know when it’s safe to go back to work? How do we know we’re no longer contagious? We were both still coughing occasionally, and clearing our throats often. And George still had no taste or smell. The CDC guidelines were ambiguous about ending isolation. They said “three days without a fever, and other symptoms have improved.” But what does “improved” mean? Completely gone, or just getting better? Neither of our employers offered any clarity either. Come back when you feel better was basically what they said. Just for our own peace of mind, we ended up getting tested again. And once again, shout out to LA County making testing easy and available. Just wish it didn’t take 4-5 days to get results. We both came back negative, which made us feel more confident to stop isolating.

Now, after four weeks of isolation and two weeks back at work, we’ve never felt a “pop the champagne, we made it!” moment. George’s taste and smell is even now only slightly recovered. And he still feels a tightness in his chest sometimes. There’s still such a swirl of uncertainty shadowing us. Are there any hidden lasting effects? We’ve read some stories of permanent degradation of lungs. Do we have any immunity, or can we get it again? One study found 30% of people showed little to no antibodies even after recovering from COVID. And even if we have antibodies, no one knows if they are actually protective, or if so, for how long. Studies of other viruses in the coronavirus family are not promising for lasting immunity. And now we’re reading some stories of people who recovered and then relapsed. None of this is encouraging for us, especially for George, who is now handling many COVID patients each day at work. Fortunately, he suits up more heavily in more PPE than they were using before he got sick, although it’s hot and uncomfortable to work in all that gear. I can’t greet him with a hug when he walks in the door after work; he insists on changing out of his work clothes and washing up first. But despite this cloud over us, we have so much to be grateful for: for being in the 80% who just ride this out at home; for having a beautiful home and yard to isolate in; for having an abundance of people who love us and were very much there for us when we needed them; for having good jobs and good insurance and not having to worry about that while worrying about our health; for having each other; for taking another breath and living another day. None of these do we take for granted now.