COVID is striking close to home for many right now. As I wrote in a previous article, my wife contracted it a couple months ago. So did my grandson. Many of my patients are suffering from the effects of this novel (i.e., never seen before) bug. Started in the populous city of Wuhan in China, COVID-19 continues to plague countries around the world.
The manifestation of symptoms of the infection varies greatly based on the way you have taken care of yourself over the years. Your lifestyle choices are arguably the biggest factor effecting the survival rate of a COVID-infected person. So I ask you, “Are you taking good care of yourself today?”
In this two-part series, I will use a few personal examples. Multiple times in past months I’ve been forced to question whether or not I contracted COVID after an exposure. Yet I remained healthy each time. I want to demonstrate to you, through my own experience, what occurred and how I responded.
In sharing these stories, I am neither boasting nor diminishing the affects of the virus on many who have contracted it. I always do my best to follow my own advice: Eat Right, Think Right, Move Right, and Sleep Right. But as you will see, I am not perfect. I simply try my best, and that’s all I ask of you.
A Vacation with Friends (and COVID?)
Quite a while ago, long before my wife’s recent COVID exposure, I had my own COVID story. It all began on a Thursday after a crazy long day. I had been up at 5:30 a.m. as always and began the day working on a pile of paperwork as well as emails and texts that I needed to address. I went into the office at 8:30 a.m. to care for my patients and completed more paperwork and calls that had to be made before I left the office. My day “ended” around 8 p.m. Once home, I ate, recovered for a while, then prepared an upcoming talk, completed more emails and other stuff. Such late-night work is not routine, but Liane and I were going to visit our friends the next day at their home in Beach Haven, NJ. I wanted to get things done before leaving. I finally got off to bed at about 2 a.m.
That was not a good “Sleep Right” night for me! Forgive me for that. I had a lot to complete before we left. Friday morning, I still had a lot to do before leaving for our weekend plans. We loaded the car and left around 2 p.m. and arrived in Beach Haven around 5:30.
After we arrived, we got cleaned up and went out to dinner at around 7:30. When we got back to their home at around 10, I excused myself from the conversations going on out on their porch and went up to bed. Needless to say, I slept like a log that night. I got up the next morning after sleeping in until around 7 a.m. and met up with our niece on the porch for some tea and conversation.
That day (Saturday) the girls went to the beach. My friend and I went on an expedition to look around at a salvage yard for things that he might be able to use in the Victorian home that they own. You know, things like old doors, and windows that would be in the period of the house. This was a day in the 90’s, and we walked for a couple of hours in the heat with no shade.
I didn’t feel like myself that day. I felt a little foggy and had a light headache, which is very unusual for me. I just chalked that up to my lack of sleep Thursday night. We had lunch, got back to the house, cleaned up, and went out to dinner again. That night, again, I excused myself and went off to bed.
That night was the killer though. I literally had every symptom that had been described by my patients with COVID! I had the worst headache that I can recall in the history of my life. It felt like someone was drilling at the base of my skull into my brains. I woke up about every hour on the hour with a different symptom, all while the headache lasted through the night. I had a fever, chills, night sweats, nausea. Then at my internal-clock-appointed normal wake time of 5:30, I woke up with such severe fatigue that I knew that I wouldn’t be able to even get out of bed.
I decided then that I probably had COVID. Unfortunately, I was around everyone else at that point, including my wife who was sleeping in the bed next to me. I made the executive decision that, since I didn’t have the strength to get out of bed, I would try to get some more rest. Evidently I fell sound asleep again because I woke up at 8 a.m. and astonishingly, I literally had none of the symptoms that I had experienced throughout the previous night. No more fatigue, fogginess, nausea, fever, and even the headache was totally gone.
What to do now???
I decided to stay away from everyone. I had my computer and paperwork, so I stayed in bed and worked. At about 10 a.m. however, my friend knocked at the door and asked when I was coming down. I told him of my plight the previous night and to what I had previously (on Saturday) attributed my milder symptoms. He responded to all that with the thought that I was just exhausted from being up so long without rest. He implored me that I should come down and partake of the brunch feast that his wife and daughter had prepared for us.
Perhaps he was right. After all, I was feeling fine. I had no symptoms to speak of, and I WAS pretty hungry. I agreed it was quite possible I had been physically exhausted from all I had done before driving down to visit them. ”OK,” I said. “I will come down.”
I joined everyone else, and we had a wonderful time together. We ate and then went out on the wraparound porch of their beautiful Victorian home and enjoyed the salt air, pleasant conversation, and the sound of waves lapping against the shore. It was a wonderful day overall.
At around 2 in the afternoon I packed the car, and we left for home. On the way we stopped and ate dinner. We arrived home around 7, I unpacked the car, put things away and got ready for bed. I woke up the next day as usual, and enjoyed caring for my patients over the next three days.
Vacation Aftermath
Wednesday evening, after my office hours, I was in a meeting, and my phone vibrated. I looked to see who it was in case I needed to take the call. It was my friend who we had visited over the weekend. I figured that he wanted to see how we made out getting home and to talk about the weekend’s events. I figured that I would just give him a call after the meeting ended. Then about five minutes later the phone buzzed again. It was my friend again. I excused myself from the meeting and took the call.
He began by informing me that his wife started with symptoms and had a test for COVID, which was positive. By that Friday he too tested positive, then his son, and his son’s girlfriend as well.
OK, so the questions now to be answered in my mind were these: First of all, did I actually have COVID and get over it in 24 hours? That was the main question for me. Second, and the question that was burning in my mind, did we all become infected at the same time, or did I give it to them not knowing that I truly was infected? That is the question that I may never be able to answer! Actually, I don’t know the answer to either one of those questions.
However, in an attempt to answer my first question I did have an antibody test performed.
To be continued...