How Did I Get It?

2 hellish days

Thinking back on the first couple of days before COVID-19 really started to rise on the scene in Dover Delaware , we had been seeing lots of co workers with fairly typical late-winter and early-spring coughs and colds, and many people came in telling us they'd recovered from a cold or were getting over the flu, or so we all thought.

No one was thinking about asking the community spread of COVID-19 was probably already rampant.

My suspicion is that somewhere in there, before we started seeing almost every customer fully decked out in personal protective equipment (PPE), was when I was exposed to an asymptomatic or recovering or full-blown viremic COVID-19 customer or co worker , before we knew what that was or were expecting to see it come in our door.

Or maybe I just got it on the bus.

These days, everything's COVID-19, all the time. As we are discovering the protean manifestations of this illness, it seems like that's all we're seeing in the office, in the emergency room, on the floors of the hospital, and even in televisits and video visits. The anchoring bias makes everything COVID-19; what else could it be?

But then, just as COVID-19 started to rear its ugly head across our beloved city, and our state my job ramped up surveillance, and we started asking about possible exposures and travel history. It was also recommended that all co workers check their temperature twice a day, before coming to work, and at the end of the workday.

I was fine Tuesday morning, and Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning. I spent both of those days seeing customer in renewing their licenses never thinking of a cough, cold, and fever etc., but was fully protected with PPE, and so I don't think that's when I got it.

At some point during the day on Tuesday my wife called me, saying she was being sent home from work early due to being dizzy .

Still asymptomatic, I finished up the workday and went home on my usual route through my development. However, when I got home, I remember being hit with a wave of extreme fatigue, and suddenly felt like I really needed to take a nap. An hour and a half later, I woke up rigoring, and checked my temperature, and it was 101.8 degrees.

Well, that pretty much does it. I think I'm going to be out for a few days with COVID-19.

Two Hellish Days

I called one of my managers, and told her that I was probably not coming in tomorrow, that I probably had COVID-19, and that I would keep everyone updated on how everything was going. I had a thermometer, a pulse oximeter, some Tylenol and Aleve, and figured I would just have to ride it out.

The next 2 days were pretty hellish.

The cough was incessant, pressure deep in my chest, initially a lot of thick sputum, but later just this nagging dry cough that wouldn't go away. I've had a lot of people describe their breathing as "restricted" or "suppressed" or "constricted," without feeling shortness of breath, and I now know what they mean. My body ached like I never remembered it aching before, a deep bone and muscle ache that just didn't seem to go away -- that ache when you haven't worked out for quite a while and then overdo it at the gym and everything hurts the next morning. Multiplied by 1,000.

Despite knowing that there were issues with NSAIDs, the Tylenol just didn't seem to do much, so at a few points I turned to Aleve out of desperation. Very quickly I lost my sense of taste and smell, but that didn't matter since I had no appetite at all and didn't eat anything for those first two days. I quickly lost about 10 pounds, which certainly wasn't a bad thing since I've been trying to lose some of the extra weight, but this was not the type of diet I would ever recommend to anybody.

I tried to keep hydrated, mixing some grape juice into seltzer, because I'd obviously heard about acute renal injury from this disease, so my life was basically lying on the couch, coughing, forcing myself to drink, trying to sleep, and walking to the bathroom.

Walking to the bathroom -- never thought that would be such a challenge. Every trip was exhausting, my body aching all over, and when I got back to the couch I felt like I needed to sleep for a week. But sleep just wouldn't come. For the first few days I would drift off occasionally on the couch, but then my brain was buzzing and I couldn't sleep at night. Why, if I'm so tired, can't I sleep?

People have asked me what medicines I took, if I used hydroxychloroquine or azithromycin or zinc or vitamin C. Maybe it's that I wasn't sick enough, and while some of these may have a role in critically ill hospitalized patients, for me this felt like something I should just weather, like a really, really, really horrible flu. Tylenol always gives me headaches (yes, odd), and never seems to do much for my fevers, so I didn't even do much of that.

When my mom yelled at me for being my own doctor (as she often does on those rare occasions when I'm sick – she's right), I called a colleague who suggested at the very start of my illness that I try empiric Tamiflu, since maybe this was the flu. This was not the flu. But I said no not even one dose of Tamiflu anyway, and during the brief interludes of sleep I got that night I had incredibly vivid nightmares, so I tossed the rest of the night also taking care of my 5 month old son who also got covid 19. After those first 2 horrible days at the end of the 2nd day I started to feel a little better, and at least was able to sit up on the bed and watch a little TV.

People also have asked about whether I was tested. As I mentioned, I came down with symptoms on a Wednesdsy night . On Thursday of that week, I went into my doctor office, where I was tested; the test came back the next morning and it was positive.

I will add more about my journey each and every day. Stay tuned for more information.

Sta