I have the coronavirus. And it hasn't been that bad. I am in my late 60s, and the sickest I've ever been was when I had bronchitis several years ago.
The nurses came to the room every four hours or so, to check my vitals, ask if I needed anything and to draw my blood. I got very good at unhooking all the monitors checking my oxygen level, blood pressure and heart rate so I could go to the bathroom or just pace around the room a little, to get my blood flowing. I never quite got the hang of hooking them back up without making a tangled mess. After 10 days, I moved out of biocontainment and into the same facility as Jeri.
As of my most recent test, on Thursday, I am still testing positive for the virus. But by now, I don't require much medical care. The nurses check my temperature twice a day and draw my blood, because I've agreed to participate in a clinical study to try to find a treatment for coronavirus. If I test negative three days in a row, then I get to leave.
The time has passed more quickly than I would've expected. With my laptop, I get as much work done as I can, remotely. I catch up with friends. I take walks around my room, trying to take a thousand more steps each day. I also watch the news. It's surreal to see everyone panic - news conferences, the stock market falling, school closures - about a disease I have. It does seem likely that coronavirus will spread in the U.S., but it won't help anybody if we all panic.
If you told me when I left home in January that I wouldn't be back until March - that, instead, I would be confined for more than 24 days because I'd catch a novel virus at the center of what could become a pandemic - that would have completely freaked me out. But now that it's happening, I'm just taking it one day at a time.
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