Miscellaneous
My parents returned from their vacation in Cuba on March 7th. A few days later, my dad developed a cough and fever. His symptoms rapidly progressed. Could it be COVID-19?Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and TwitterTRANSCRIPTAUDIO DIARY - MARCH 16, 2020So the whole world seems to be freaking out about the coronavirus right now, but there's particularly a lot of stress in my household because we think that my dad has coronavirus.INTROI’m Jason Herterich and this is Discomfort Zone. I hadn’t planned on doing an episode on coronavirus, but unfortunately this story came to me. Today, I’m sharing my family’s story on coronavirus.Jason (right) meeting two members from a long-neck tribe during a jungle trek near Chiang Mai, ThailandAUDIO DIARY CONTINUEDHe got back from Cuba nine days ago and a few days later he got a sore throat. A few days later he starts coughing and has a fever. We isolated him in the basement. My mom and I are sharing the house with him and we both haven't shown any symptoms yet. We both had a little bit of a dry throat but nothing serious. Yeah it's really scary right now. He went in to get tested on Friday and they told us they would get our test results twenty four to forty eight hours later and here is it, over seventy two hours later, we're at seventy five hours later. We have not heard back from them. We're tried calling. Left a message. Nothing yet.So we are just... living in limbo. Yeah... It's kinda scary. We all knew the coronavirus was coming. There were reports a month ago that thirty to seventy percent of Canadians were going to be infected with it but you just don't think that it's going to happen to you. And definitely we didn't think it was going to happen this quickly. Now, my dad's symptoms haven't progressed too much. We don't know for certain that he has it, but it looks that way. He's got a really bad cough. It got worse for many days. It seems to have leveled off. He's got a fever, he's getting sweats and chills at night time and during the day. He doesn't have shortness of breath which is good, but it certainly would seem like he has it.So yeah, there's a lot of uncertainty right now... I'm not used to being in this situation. You know, I've got fibromyalgia, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, a lot of other co-morbid conditions but my parents are the ones that have been worrying about my health. And now I guess I'm getting a peek into their world, what their world has been like for many years. And just the uncertainty of it... the helplessness that you feel. You want to do something but you can't and you have to stay away because I don't want to get it myself. I don't know how it would affect me or my mom and yeah we just want to stay healthy but....Yeah anyways, right now I'm just trying to distract myself, trying to meditate, play guitar. Yeah, self-care right now is the most important thing. My mom and I have just been playing a lot of board games. Trying to keep ourselves occupied.A FEW DAYS LATER*Jason rushing downstairs on crutches*Narration: “Three days after the recording you just heard, I was on a conference call when my Mom interrupted to share some news. I rushed down the stairs after the call to find out what was going on. That clicking sound you’re hearing is my crutch. I recently injured my leg.”View this post on InstagramA post shared by Discomfort Zone Podcast (@dzonepodcast) on Jan 20, 2020 at 7:49am PSTJason: “I'm recording by the way. What's going on?”Mom: “What is going on? After two hours I got through to Public Health. Two hours today on the phone and right away she told me, after she got the okay from dad, that it's negative. The result is negative. He doesn't have coronavirus.”Jason: “So it's just a bad cough?”Mom: “Um no. It's probably or highly likely that it's influenza A.”Jason: “What's influenza A?”Mom: “It's a type of the flu that is not covered by the flu vaccine.”Jason: “So it's just a really bad flu?”Mom: “It's a really bad flu.”Jason: “There was no chance it could be dengue fever? I know you said that's there's a rash with that but is there any.... Because you guys were just in Cuba.”Mom: “We were in Cuba and it sounds like there's some dengue fever but one of the main things, main symptoms is a rash on the thorax, on the chest, which he never had.”Jason: “Okay, so where does that leave us?”Mom: “So it leaves us with probably influenza A which I was just trying to research but a flu, a bad flu can last seven to ten days so it's hopefully that.”Jason: “Okay.”Mom: “He can contact a general physician but there's really no treatment for that either, it's also caused by virus. I think it's very close to the coronavirus in symptoms especially in someone who's sixty five.”Jason: “Okay, so I guess, how do you feel about that? I'm just so shocked by the news I don't know how to react.”Mom: “Well I'm shocked too because we were sure that he had it. He was so sick and the symptoms are very similar so they did say that he should stay in isolation but obviously he's not going to go out and spread this...”Jason: “Yeah, definitely not.”Mom: “...This disease, whatever it is. I should also stay in isolation because I traveled out of the country. It'll be two weeks on Saturday and you don't have to isolate.”Jason: “I don't have to isolate. I need to get the message out because I've told so many people. I think a lot of people, especially the disability media, they are all wondering.”Narration: “I had informed everyone who I had been in recent contact with that I may have exposed them to the virus.”Mom: “O yes yes yes. You can tell them it's not coronavirus.”Jason: “I feel bad. I feel like I incited panic in some people.”Mom: “Well, it was cautious to do. It certainly looked like it but I don't... I just heard that influenza A goes deep into the chest as early as the coronavirus. The flu can still be very, very, very bad for an elderly person. People do die from the regular flu. You know they get respiratory illness and pneumonia but I don't think it's deep in his chest. And he does not have shortness of breath and I guess maybe that comes on quicker with the coronavirus.”Jason: “ Yeah, I guess so. He's going to have to stay isolated for a while but I mean, to me this is very very very positive news.”Mom: “It is good news! It is good news that he doesn't need to get tested again and we don't have to get tested and it's negative. And seeing how we've self-isolated, we shouldn't have gotten coronavirus from anybody else.”Jason: “No, exactly. We're safe. We're safe.”Mom: “So we are safe and you know what we should continue to practice social distancing because, number one we don't want to get it. Number two, I guess there's a chance that you could get the flu from dad, although you've kept your distance so...”Jason: “I mean, we don't have to be as anal about literally cleaning every last inch of the house. I mean still staying super far away”Mom: “All the door knobs and whatnot. Hopefully this will subside, he has not gotten worse in the past couple of days.”Jason: “He's going to want to isolate though because his immune system is going to be much weaker so if he did come into contact with the coronavirus, I think that that would kick his body's ass right now.”Mom: “Yeah, yeah. He needs to rest and get better from whatever this is. It's a lesson that influenza A is just as, it gives you just as bad of symptoms as the coronavirus, almost maybe. It doesn't progress as quickly but the flu is something to be worried about too for people that have disabilities and older people too. Anyone, you know, anyone compromised. Anyway, good news!”Jason: “ Yeah, good news. Is it a consequence that we got the result back the day after Missy Elliot tweeted back her prayers towards dad?”Mom: “Who did?”Jason: “Missy Elliott. You know the famous rapper. Didn't I tell you that?”Mom: “No! I never heard that.”Jason: “Okay, yeah on twitter. I wrote a tweet about dad and how we haven't gotten his results and how he's really sick and she just tweeted back her support. Being like O you know my prayers are with you and your family and I'm sorry you're going through this stressful time.”Mom: “Thank God. Thank her and God.” *Laughs*Jason: *Laughing* “Yeah thank god, thank Missy Elliott.”Embed from Getty ImagesDID WE CELEBRATE PREMATURELY?*DICE BEING ROLLED IN BACKGROUND*Jason: “How's dad doing?”Mom: “About the same. About the same. I don't think he has a fever. He told me when he woke up at four o clock in the morning, he was short of breath.”Jason: “Really?”Mom: “Yeah. He wants to go to the doctor tomorrow.”Jason: “I think that's a good idea.”Mom: “Yeah. Hopefully it's just from phlegm.”*DAD ENTERS SCENE*Mom: “Hi there.”Jason: “Hey, how are you feeling?”Dad: “Worse than yesterday.”Jason: “Yeah? Fuck.”A FEW DAYS LATER…Jason: “Jumping right into it, how are you feeling now?”Dad: “Tired. I would say at the worse I felt, these are all relative numbers because I have nothing to base them on, at worst I was running at 10 to 15% lung capacity. Now I'd say I'm running close to 75% although, I still have (symptoms). My hearing still isn't good, fluid in both ears still. No sign of infection from that, but I'm still weak and the past week or so I've only been able to put on 0.6 pounds, even though I've been eating a lot more.”My dad, a 65-year old white male with a grey mustache and blue eyes wearing a blue vest with a plaid shirt underneathJason: “How much weight did you lose?”Dad: “I lost 14.4 pounds in 11 days. And I don't know if I lost any more because I wasn't weighing myself necessarily after that every day. But when I was done, at 11 days into it, I weighed 178 and now, a week later, I weigh 178.6 this morning.Jason: “Just going to take some time..”Dad: “Yesterday morning I weighed 178.4, so it's not coming on too quick. I'm still battling something.”Jason: “You still are. So we had you quarantined off in the basement. You would come upstairs to the office to eating all of your meals but we were essentially keeping you shuttered off into the basement to keep you quarantined so that mom and I didn't get sick because we thought you had coronavirus the whole time. So we rarely saw you but we heard you coughing, and those cough fits would sound horrendous. They would go on forever. Can you talk about what those symptoms were like?”Dad: “It felt like if I took a breath greater than what did I say? 10, 15% or whatever then I would automatically go into a coughing fit and in a coughing fit, if it was severe enough, you couldn't get air, period. So when you finally got it, you had to breath very shallow to try and regain a bit of oxygen. Cough drops helped. Probably as a result of it or as a result of my sickness, I was so inactive I didn't need too much oxygen because I was sleeping probably 10 to 11 hours, at least, every night, aside from my coughing fits. And then in the daytime, I was sleeping 4 or 5 hours too. The rest of the time, I was just laying down. I wasn't at all active. When I did go upstairs to have meals, strangely enough, I didn't feel winded going up stairs but we had just come back from a holiday where your mother and I got a ton of exercise. A ton of hiking, a ton of dancing, stuff like that. We were snorkeling, we were very active and I guess my muscles were in good shape at that point.”Jason: “When you were at your sickest downstairs, we all thought it was coronavirus and we just saw you get sicker and sicker by the day. What was going through your mind at that point? What was your biggest worry?”Dad: “The one weak period I was wondering if I was going to see my grandchildren. I knew that this was getting serious. Your grandmother (mom’s side) had a bad fever, something similar to what I had and on day 10 her organs shut down and she died. She was younger than me so my fear was leaving everybody.”Jason: “Yeah, honestly. We were incredibly scared during that period.”Dad: “Yeah and unfortunately, the way the medical system is, you can't get medical help right now unless you're actually dying.”Jason: “There's really not much you can do. It's like we're all totally helpless.”Dad: “Fortunately you guys kept feeding me, I couldn't eat much, but you got me what I needed. And I realized it's up to me so once I got the antibiotics and started Tylenol and I guess things improved and I thought well maybe I can turn this around but as late as a week ago yesterday, I wasn't sure.”Jason: “How did you feel when you received that negative test result?”Dad: “Well.. I guess I was surprised because I had so many symptoms of it but it didn't change anything. I was still really sick and I thought afterward, this is a false negative. And I still think that's a possibility, on the other hand I had a flu shot so I don't think it was the common flu but who knows, it could've been. I didn't have all the symptoms of dengue fever, I don't know what all the symptoms of zika are, but I could've had another tropical flu of some sort, who knows.”Jason: “You've had a very strong immune system over the years. Anytime you've gotten sick, you've bounced back pretty quickly.”Dad: “Yeah. I've never been this sick in my life.”Jason: “We thought we were going to have to take you to the hospital and eventually get you on a ventilator. We didn't really know.”Dad: “At some point, there was one night where I thought I should call Diane because I can't breath but it came back. And as you can hear, it's not right yet.”Jason: “Yeah, your voice hasn't fully returned.”Dad: “No and I can't hear properly, although I don't think I have an ear infection because I have no pain but my ears are both still full of fluid. Sometimes when you try to pop your ears, you pinch your nose and you blow a little bit, well when I was doing that a week ago, it was like explosions in my ears, they were that loud. Now it's still loud in one ear but not quite as loud. But again, if mom talks quietly I can't hear her, I just hear mumbling.”Jason: “Now that your health is returning and we're presuming you're going to make a quick recovery. It might take a couple of weeks or months to get all your strength back and everything. Now we're adjusting to this new norm all of a sudden, being in this pandemic, what else is on your mind? Is there anything else that you're worried about now?”Dad: “Well, I'm worried about the condition of my parents, if they were to get this disease, that they would not qualify for ventilators.CALLING GRANDMA*Phone ringing*Omi: Hello?Jason: Hey Omi it’s JasonIn Episode 4: My grandma shares her thoughts on toilet paper hoarding and wisdom from World War 2 ?? * Link to the full episode is in my bio! * * * * * #applepodcast #podcastinglife #podcastersofig #podcastproducer #notalldisabilitiesarevisibleOmi: Hi Jason!Jason: Hi, how are you doing?Omi: OK, just dusting, cleaning, whatever hahaJason: Yeah.Omi: Yeah. What’s up with you?Jason: Not too much, just spending time here at home…this is going to be the new norm for a bitOmi: I think everyone is scared, but from what Werner says it’s worse. Yesterday morning, he went to his groceries he goes at 7 o’clock in the morning and there’s usually no one there. Yesterday, the parking lot was half full. He went to the grocery store, there was no cheese, no eggs, no toilet paper! Can you believe that?Jason: Yeah. Everybody is stocking up. Toilet paper especially.Omi: I am not stocking up. C’mon I grew up in the war, I know how to help myself. If you run out of toilet paper, rip up some old rags, make some squares, and put them in the washing machine. Right?Jason: Hahaha exactly.Omi: C’mon. When I grew up, we had newspaper, we had no toilet paper. And look at me, I’m 89 years old.Jason: Maybe we should start holding onto all the old newspapers.Omi: Yeah hahaJason: Don’t throw them out too quickOmi: Yeah. But then your bum gets black you know, so you have to wash it.Jason: HahahaOmi: If you have old sheets or old rags I would just cut them nicely into squares and put them in the toilet.Jason: We need to get you on broadcast, we need to get you your own TV show right now, sharing your insights.Omi: You think so? Haha*Phone conversation fades out*WHAT LIES AHEADI’m been feeling quite anxious lately due to my dad’s health crisis and isolation. My pain, fatigue, and dizziness have all gotten worse. Things are stressful right now and likely will be for a while.This pandemic is hard on everyone. But there will be light at the end of the tunnel. We’re going to get through this together.We need to focus on what we can control. We can’t control what goes on outside of our living spaces – but we can choose how we spend our time. I’m spending my days of physical isolation on the phone with friends, making this podcast, and playing board games. I’m limiting my media consumption.I’ve been meaning to start a gratitude practice. So I’ll start now:#1) I’m grateful that my dad is still with us and getting healthy.#2) I’m grateful that I don’t have to wipe my butt with newspaper or reusable cloth.What are you grateful for? And what brings you joy?Let me know in the comments below!CREDITSProduced by: Jason HerterichSound design by: Jason HerterichGuitar music by: Jason HerterichAudio Engineering by: Justin MaradinTranscription provided by: Eric GroulxLINKSBoston Globe - How Accurate Are Coronavirus Tests?June 21, 2020 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.