What would you think if this was you?

Earlier this week I watched Chris Cuomo on CNN describing his nights of chills, disorientation and hallucinations. My heart raced as I listened to him speak out about the need for everyone to be as public as possible in informing any and all details about the manifestations of this invisible enemy. I took his words to heart because he was telling his story which was sounding eerily familiar.

My “bronchitis” in February has been weighing heavily on my mind for almost two months. So many people are truly suffering and many more will be experiencing tremendous hardship over the weeks and months ahead. My angst pales in comparison. But, here goes.

We were typically a little anxious when our son Josh and his family planned to travel to the Philippines in late January for a much anticipated trip to visit our daughter-in-law Judy’s birthplace and to introduce their children Nakoa (4) and Jace (almost 2) to extended family and dear childhood friends. Our loved ones were going to be traveling across the world for two weeks. We typically see or talk with them almost daily in a normal week. Our anxiety was natural and expected.

We weren’t thrilled that there was a volcano eruption closing the Manilla Airport for a few days right before they were about to leave for their trip. But, after the weather cleared and the airport reopened, we were just back to normal worries. Will Jace sleep on the 24 plane ride? Will someone accidentally drink impure water? Do they really think it will be safe without car seats?

While they were gone, articles about the spread of a virus in China started appearing in news stories. It raised parental antenna, but we were comforted in the fact that after initially looking at flights through China, they were going to be flying through Tokyo and while away they were going to be in rural areas and some remote resort islands far from crowds.

In the meantime, Bruce and I were about to go on our own adventure. We were going to be on the road to Des Moines, Iowa for ten days to campaign for Pete Buttigieg while they were away from home.

Iowa in January is as you can imagine — wet and cold. As anyone who has ever sat in an office or hotel conference room with me knows, I have had a persistent dry cough for about 30 years. It was finally diagnosed after a trip to Italy as a severe allergy to mold. Wet leaves and cold weather are not my best friends either. Instead of canvassing like most people who had flown in from across the country, my days in Iowa were reporting for duty each morning to call and text hundreds of voters every day. I was happily ensconced in my seat at a long folding table in Pete’s Fleur Office in Des Moines with Bruce and a congenial group of volunteers.

On our first day in the office, I was seated next to Thomas who had flown in from Beijing, China earlier that month. Thomas impressed me in the way he spoke about Pete and since he was originally from Maryland, we did a short Facebook live on our Maryland for Pete page talking about why he had traveled to Iowa. We sat side by side all day with our laptops sharing chargers, and periodically moving our metal folding chairs to fit more people in our cramped space. We were extremely focused on our Pete efforts and weren’t really paying much attention to the growing threat across the world other than how it was potentially going to affect travel home for him and another one of our new young friends and tablemates who had made a similar trip from Taiwan.

After a great week in Iowa we flew home. The same week the China travel ban went into effect and our local brood flew home from the Philippines wearing their masks on the plane and periodically being temperature checked as they boarded flights. We were reunited when Bruce picked our happy travelers up at Washington Dulles Airport. Two weeks was a long time and so much had gone on while we all were on our separate journeys so tons of kisses and hugs were part of our happy reunion. We made up for two long weeks with lots of time together.

A few days later Jace developed a runny nose. But, when a child is 22 months old and has had lots of ear infections and frequent much more serious colds, a drippy nose was not unusual. So, when we offered to have Jace and Nakoa sleep over, we agreed that his slight cold wasn’t a big deal especially since Nakoa was totally fine.

Jace is too big and too much of a climber for a pack and play and too little to sleep in a big bed alone, so I put him to sleep in our king size bed and fell asleep with him. Bruce seeing Jace sprawled out diagonally across his side of our bed decided that sleeping upstairs was a much better option for the night.

Nine days after they returned and two days after the sleepover, I woke up feeling lousy and thinking that what I was feeling was likely the prequel to Jace’s cold. I had a headache and my body hurt. Most of all, I was exhausted. The next day I felt worse with the predictable cold and the unwelcome cough that is all too familiar. Our house has lots of steps, but I felt so miserable that I hardly left our room. I had no appetite, nothing tasted right and I just felt completely worn out by what became a deepening persistent cough and unrelenting congestion. For days I hardly got out of bed. The energy it took to take a flight of stairs just wasn’t worth it.

Over those days, a friend, Dr. Dara Kass and I were in constant contact as we had bonded as Pete volunteers and were giving each other updates on the campaign. Dara, an emergency doctor who is a renowned practitioner of telemedicine was listening to my voice and my symptoms as this was progressing. NyQuil and DayQuil just weren’t cutting it. She was in Las Vegas for the Caucuses and called in a couple of prescriptions when my fever started elevating. She commented that it seemed to be developing into “legit bronchitis.” My fever was elevating rapidly and settled at around 102 degrees for about 24 hours. The evening my fever had spiked I was very disoriented and weirdly decided to lie on the floor of our bathroom. I wasn’t exactly nauseous, but I didn’t know what I was feeling and I decided I didn’t have the energy to walk back to bed.

Bruce had been downstairs and was a little worried when he realized that I hadn’t eaten much for a couple of days and brought me applesauce and crackers. It didn’t stay with me for more than a few minutes. My cough was horrific and the antibiotic and cough medicine I was prescribed weren’t really helping. It was a very long night.

As the days went on, I felt a little better when my fever went down to slightly above normal, but my stomach was a mess and my cough was exhausting. I kidded that at least I had lost weight. I was spending day after day laying in bed watching the stories about the Presidential primaries and more targeted attention on COVID reports from abroad.

Those same days, Josh was developing a cough, too. He didn’t have a fever or other symptoms and it was so uneventful we didn’t even talk about it. After several days, when his cough just wouldn’t go away, he went to his medical practice clinic where he was given a prescription for his cough. He wasn’t asked if he had traveled outside of the U.S. when he was examined and sent home with no restrictions.

Dara and I talked almost daily and mostly we talked politics. The possibility that I had COVID was a very remote idea. It was mid-February, the only people diagnosed and tested in the U.S. at that point could pinpoint exactly where they were exposed. Maryland had not yet verified a case which didn’t occur until March 5th.

By early March, as news reports started playing up the difference in how older people were reacting to COVID in contrast to younger people, we started wondering out loud if Josh and I actually had COVID. Almost jokingly, we gave it a 5% probability, but I started worrying anyway. Three of us had been ill, but the other three family members who had been in contact with us, were seemingly fine. We always send colds and flu back and forth between our two houses but this time only three of the six of us had been noticeably ill. Jace’s runny nose disappeared without the typical escalation and Nakoa never even sniffled. That was a first.

For weeks I had no stamina or interest in leaving my house. It was cold and rainy which made the choice easy. I would tire after very short stints on our treadmill. It was strange. Had we possibly had COVID? If so, could I possibly still be contagious? How long would I be contagious if it was true? And if not, was I especially at risk because of my chronic cough?

I was especially worried because the afternoon before I started showing symptoms, I had organized an event with over 100 people for Pete in Silver Spring and had attended a 70th Birthday Party. Even more alarming is that after I had been on antibiotics several days and no longer had a fever, so under normal circumstances no longer contagious, we had all ventured out to Pete’s huge outdoor Rally in Arlington, Virginia. That day I carefully and almost jokingly stood apart from people explaining, “stay away from me, I’m just getting over bronchitis.” There were no hugs or handshakes on a day that we were in a huge crowd. It has been on my mind constantly ever since. But on that day, I was worried about my bronchitis being a problem, no known COVID cases had been reported in Virginia and none were even reported until a full three weeks later.

Then news stories made ignoring the obvious more difficult. As time went on, Josh and I started raising our percentage bets to about a 10 or even 25% odds. Meanwhile Dara was explaining how her telemedicine shifts had become filled with people reporting what she recognized as likely COVID symptoms. The onslaught was beginning to feel very tangible. I especially began to worry when Dara sent her children to live with their grandparents before she went back to her hospital shift. After talking to her and hearing the constant warnings that started to appear in news reports, Bruce cancelled a trip to Atlanta and we hunkered down with me growing increasingly anxious. I used to use a nebulizer twice a day and other COPD treatments. I am very possibly by virtue of my medical history and age considered part of the “vulnerable population.”

On March 11th there were 10 confirmed COVID cases in Virginia. Josh had a pre-planned physical. Josh’s doctor hadn’t seen him for the original appointment and when he looked at Josh’s record, they talked about his clinic visit. Josh explained the course of his and my illnesses and the family’s six flights taken through a number of airports in the Philippines, Japan and Washington, DC in late January and early February. In response, his doctor told him that he thought it was entirely possible that it had been COVID. The doctor lamented that he was sure that day in and day out he was seeing COVID patients, but there was nothing to do because in his view we were “so far past mitigation.” I relayed the story to Dara who by this time was also convinced, from her vantage point that we were already way beyond in identification of COVID in the population. She was working nonstop with others to raise flags about the potential impacts . Of course, she agreed, my “bronchitis” could have been COVID. This was one more validation on a day when cancellations across the country started popping up on a widespread scale.

On March 19th, Dara was diagnosed for COVID testing positive after her almost immediate exposure once back in a NYC hospital emergency room. Fortunately, her symptoms weren’t debilitating and we discussed how she felt as she progressed through her illness. I was her “patient” and now understood how she was feeling even before she described her symptoms. By this time, Josh and I were guessing our odds daily for having contracted the virus, but we were always reluctant to really believe It was possible. By then there were 107 cases in Maryland and about the same in Virginia.

On March 22nd, a full month after my first symptoms, when the severity of the COVID crisis started developing at an even more alarmingly rapid pace, I decided to “nervous energy bake” which in a fit of optimism led me to decide to clean my spice drawer. I separated out some spices that didn’t have visible expiration dates on their bottles. I googled what to do and read that you could determine whether they were fresh by smelling them and checking their potency. When I couldn’t differentiate any of the spices, I threw them all out.

Later that afternoon I was talking to Dara who by this time had become one of the nation’s leading spokespersons raising the alarms about COVID and the lack of medical resources. She checked in periodically knowing that our roles had been reversed and I was worrying about her with concerned messages. She told me that she had lost her sense of smell and taste and that there was going to be a report out showing how this was one of the symptoms. We laughed when I ironically told her how I had just thrown out several bottles of spices because I couldn’t smell them and looking back couldn’t taste anything when I had been sick. We both knew instantly, that final clue may have been the most bizarre clincher of all. That is of course if it wasn’t just one more out of the box coincidence. We put our odds of COVID at about 75%.

Our closest friends and family have heard parts of this story and I must admit that I feel a bit like a hypochondriac when I say we might have had COVID. Either people are just kindly humoring me or my instincts and two doctors are correct. We will never know. It doesn’t really matter for how we will respond in the immediate future.

Like everyone else, our new “not normal” continues.

Josh and his family visited this afternoon. We stood several feet away from their car and we made a no contact trade. We gave them two Haggadahs for Wednesday night and they brought us a few disposable masks that they have left over from their flights home in February. We will wear them whenever we leave our house in the weeks ahead.

I wrote this record in large part to make sure I have the details straight. I know now more than ever we all need to trust our instincts but listen to the experts. We need to always respect facts. One fact is very clear. COVID is random and invisible. People everywhere could have the virus or be carriers. We won’t know until tests are available and quick.

The best news is that I have a tele-medicine call with my regular doctor, a Johns Hopkins — affiliated physician, on Monday morning to see if I can be tested for the antibody. I am hopeful that it will be available. If I test positive our entire family will be tested, as well. We want to know our options to be of service in a meaningful way. If we can’t be tested or test negative, we will continue through this unbelievable period being as careful as possible.

Regardless, I will also consider myself lucky because throughout this time of uncertainty my friend Dara has been my doctor and even more importantly my inspiration. I have watched this crisis through her eyes and words. Today is her first day back in the Emergency Room since her onset of symptoms last month. She has been on my mind all day. Dara and her colleagues are the helpers Mr. Rogers urged us to look for in scary times. She has been my bright light in the darkness. I pray these dedicated medical professionals lead us all to safety. We need them so desperately.