Well, here's my COVID-19 story

OK, Ron Warnick, here it is.

I am finally going to confess to the world that I have had COVID-19. I told Warnick, the Quay County Sun’s full-time journalist, about it, but very few others. Warnick, however, urged me repeatedly to tell my story. Others did, too.

So here it is:

I had a “mild to moderate” case in August, which made me feel like a one-man war zone for about three weeks.

I went through a short stretch of fever and chills, an incidence of heart palpitations that sent me to the emergency room, chronic fatigue and long daily naps, and “brain fog,” which, exactly as the name implies, feels like your mind is trying to function as rain falls inside your head.

Just as bad was the uncertainty of not knowing where the disease was headed and knowing there was nothing at the time we could do about it short of breathing assistance in the hospital.

I picked up COVID-19 at a band rehearsal. All five of us in the band got it even though we were at least 6 feet apart in a large, spacious room. A very hard lesson about mask-wearing.

I passed it on to my wife, who was just getting over what in all likelihood was a first bout of COVID-19.

If my wife caught COVID-19 early in 2020, however, she said the confirmed case I brought home to her in August was mild in comparison. She had already been ill for months.

Bottom line for both of us: We feel that we were darn lucky. My wife, however, has some lung scarring and I still haven’t recovered much of my sense of smell.

We don’t know at this point how much or even if these “long-hauler” symptoms are reversible.

We have resumed the habits that we feel have kept us healthy, however, like daily walks and our own fitness routines. To supplement that, we have recently adopted a very energetic young shelter dog who demands a lot of daily exercise.

COVID-19 seems to be customized for each victim. Previously healthy people end up on ventilators, and even those who would seem to be the most vulnerable test positive with no symptoms at all.

I would like to shout through a megaphone to COVID-deniers and anti-vaccine people that:

a. COVID-19 Is not a plot to discredit Republicans. It is a miserable, debilitating, frighteningly contagious disease.

b. Fighting COVID-19 is worth every minute of mask-wearing, social distancing and hand-washing.

c. The vaccine, like the other preventative measures listed above, is necessary to fight this invisible enemy.

You don’t want COVID-19’s miseries for yourself or loved ones, or even people you don’t like very much. I wouldn’t have wished it on former President Donald Trump, but he got it anyway.

My wife and I are currently protected by antibodies. How much protection for how long we don’t know, especially as the novel coronavirus mutates.

We know our antibody status because we get regular antibody reports as blood donors, but we are eagerly awaiting our turn to get vaccinated.

Steve Hansen writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

[email protected]