Have been wanting to write this out...
2/28: Mike texted me saying he wasn’t feeling well. I was taking Alice to meet my parents so that she could spend the weekend with them. I came home and he said his chest felt congested and had a tickle in his throat. He went to bed early to try to sleep it off.
2/29: Mike woke up feeling worse and decided to go to Urgent Care. He did not have a fever, but he did have chills, a cough, chest congestion, and overall aches. He texted me from the Urgent Care telling me that it was going to be a while because it was so busy in there. Once they got him in the back, they took his BP and it was 152/112. They performed an EKG because they were concerned that he was having a heart attack. EKG looked good, but with that high of a BP they told him to go to the ER. Instead of going straight to the ER he came home and told me what happened. He felt like they took the BP wrong and that it wasn’t necessary to go to the ER. Luckily, I have a wrist BP monitor from when I was pregnant, so I pulled it out and took his and then took mine as a baseline and his was still extremely elevated. I told him to go to the ER. He went and they ran a whole bunch of tests that all came back negative. They told him it was acute bronchitis and prescribed him a cough suppressant and ibuprofen and sent him home. He came home and was feeling miserable, so he just went to bed and slept the rest of the evening and through the night.
3/1: I went to meet my parents to pick up Alice and Mike pretty much slept the entire day. At this point his cough was very persistent and, his skin color had turned a reddish orange. He was also sweating profusely while feeling like he was freezing.
3/2: I woke up in the morning and went downstairs to do my workout as usual and while I was working out, I heard Mike come down to the kitchen. He was making very odd noises (a cross between moaning and howling), so I went upstairs to find him sitting at the kitchen table. His skin color was still that reddish orange color and was very sweaty. He seemed disoriented and didn’t really seem like he was ‘there’ his eyes looked like they were looking at me, but he wasn’t really seeing me. It was unnerving and upsetting to see him this sick. I told him to drink some water and sent him back to bed. I finished my morning routing and went into work. Mike stayed home sick and slept most of the day. When we got home, he didn’t come down until almost 9pm. He ate some soup and then went right back to bed. He said he felt miserable.
3/3: I went into work and Mike stayed home again and asked me to call to get him into our doctor to be seen. He went in and they had masks at the door which they asked him to wear. Once the doctor saw him, he sent him back to the ER because he now had a fever of 103 along with the chest congestion, cough, and body aches/chills. The ER kept him for a few hours and ran several tests again. Everything came back negative and they told him repeatedly “you have a severe flu-like virus that is not the flu.” They gave him oxygen and fluids which was the first thing that helped him. He called me at work and told me this, so I left work early, stopped at CVS and grabbed Lysol and a gallon of bleach (this was early so these items were still in stock). I went home and started in our bedroom removing all bedding or anything cloth that could be thrown in the washing machine and took everything down to the laundry room. I locked the cats in one room with the window open, put the dogs outside, and opened as many windows as I could. I then covered my face with a bandana and sprayed Lysol and used bleach and warm water to wipe down every surface I possibly could. At the ER they prescribed him antibiotics, a steroid, ibuprofen, and more cough suppressant… and sent him home once again reiterating that he had “a severe flu-like virus that is NOT the flu.” At this point I was panicking, I felt like it was so obvious what he had, but we had also learned from a friend who is an MD that they were not testing people unless they met specific requirements and since Mike had not traveled or did not know of contact with someone who had traveled they didn’t test him or even alert anyone. They did advise that we self-isolate for 14 days. He came home, showered, and went to bed.
3/4: I woke up with a 101 temp and felt rundown and achy. I called our doctors office and when I told the receptionist what was going on, she put the doctor on the phone and he said, “I can’t believe they sent Mike home without testing him for COVID19, I really believe that is what he has.” This was my fear all along, but hearing it said out loud was terrifying. I asked him “should we be trying to get him tested?” and he said “it’s almost impossible to find the tests, I already called the local health department and they just quoted the CDC site. I asked them what to do for my patient and they had no response.” I went into the doctor’s office where I tested negative for the flu, they advised we self-isolate for 14 days just to be safe and was sent home. I called my boss and told her what was going on and she supported me self-isolating for the next 14 days.
3/5 – 3/8: spent these days at home cleaning and washing everything I could.
3/9: Mike went back to his doctor’s office for a follow-up appt. They said his vitals were all looking good which was a great update. Our friend who is an MD had sent us a form to give the doctor that would initiate a COVID19 test. The doctor filled it out and submitted it as instructed on the form. It was disappointing that the doctor’s office had no idea where the form came from and had no idea how to get a test done. This is not a knock on our doctor, but on the medical system in general. Why do some doctors have this info and others don’t? Anyways, they submitted the form and within the hour had instructions from the local health department on how to do the test. They called Mike and asked him to come back to get tested, but this time he was asked to wait in his car and the nurse would come out to him. They sent the test in and a few hours later were told that they sent it in the wrong tube so it had to be re-done.
3/10: Mike went back to get re-tested.
3/11: We got the call that the test was negative which should have been a relief, but it wasn’t. If you count the days between when he first started not feeling well and when we finally got the results it was 12 days. The test does not look for anti-bodies so it would not be able to tell if he had it and was recovered. That test result will not convince me that he didn’t have COVID19. Based on every account I have heard of people who tested positive it is scary how similar the experiences were. I have never seen anyone that sick and it was terrifying.
