Julie Kipp of Yale offered to share her experience with the coronavirus with our readers. Julie previously wrote the local news for Yale and Bagley in The News Gazette.
`~by Julie Kipp, courtesy of The Scranton Journal
This experience started at 1:30 am on Saturday, Oct. 10, when I woke up with a scratchy throat and a low-grade fever after having gone to bed feeling fine. I got out of bed, got a glass of water and took some Tylenol, and went back to bed. At 6 am I woke up with a really bad sore throat and a higher fever; by noon I was coughing and my chest felt heavy. I went online and found a walk-in clinic where I could get a Coronavirus test and headed that direction. While driving to the clinic I began to feel lightheaded so I went to the emergency room at a local hospital instead.
There I was given an IV drip for dehydration, a chest x-ray, and EKG, gave a urine sample, and they drew blood for testing. I was tested for Coronavirus, influenza, and strep throat. My vital signs were good so they sent me home with instructions to take over the counter medication for my symptoms and said they would call me on Monday with the results. The positive result resulted in being told to quarantine for two weeks and isolate myself at home. I moved into our guest room and used the guest bathroom to try to keep my husband, Kevin, from getting sick.
Over the next five days I developed a headache, body aches, loss of taste and smell, loss of appetite, trouble sleeping, severe head and chest congestion, extreme tiredness taking two naps a day, and felt like my mind was foggy. The worst symptoms were running a fever for 24 days straight and coughing up the green sputum from my lungs that felt like coughing up razor blades that hurt so bad I cried.
On Sunday, Oct. 18, I woke up feeling worse with diarrhea, which is another symptom, and I started the day with a temperature of 97.3. By that afternoon I was coughing up green-brown sputum, my fever went up to 102, and I was having trouble breathing. I called my husband and he drove me back to the same emergency room. I had another chest x-ray, EKG, blood drawn, and my vital signs were good. I was given Dexamethasone, which is a steroid, for the inflammation in my lungs and a prescription for 10 additional days.
The doctor asked me what precautions I had been taking. I told him that I was wearing a mask in public, social distancing and washing my hands way more frequently. His response was, “All it took was touching one door handle or a gas pump and touching your face.” He told me to continue the over the counter medicine I was taking in addition to the steroid, quarantine for two weeks and isolate myself at home.
I am writing this on Sunday, Nov. 15, and I’m now on day 36. I still have a slight cough with some minor head and chest congestion. The headache comes and goes. I can taste some foods but others don’t taste like they should yet; I cannot taste milk and I can barely taste coffee. I can smell some foods now if they are directly under my nose.
The worst symptom now is how easily I tire from doing simple tasks. After missing 18 full days of work, I am going to the office and working half days now at Community Insurance Agency in Coon Rapids. I can honestly say that I have never been this sick in my entire life.
I am so thankful that I didn’t require hospitalization, being put on a respirator, or worse. I have a very good friend who, after battling this virus for almost two weeks, developed bacterial pneumonia and required hospitalization. She was diagnosed two weeks ahead of me and she is still experiencing some of the exact same lingering symptoms.
It makes me extremely sad to hear, “We are learning to live with Coronavirus.”
What I hear is, “We have accepted people dying from Coronavirus.”
The longer this virus is allowed to go on, uncontrolled, the more likely the chance of losing a friend, or worse, a family member we love to Coronavirus.
