TESTED POSITIVE? Our experience with COVID-19

George and Lisa talk about our personal experience with COVID-19. We just recently both got diagnosed with COVID and have been in quarantine for the past 4 weeks. Here the good, the bad, and the crazy things that we experienced.

Lisa: Hi welcome back to our review podcast. We have been on a little hiatus for about I guess you’d say six weeks we have not recorded a podcast and um that’s kind of a bummer right so I am Lisa Richart Hernandez

George: And I’m George Hernandez and we are recovering from Covid.

Lisa: that’s right we um I hesitated whether or not and contemplated do we want to share our coveted story with everyone um I feel like there’s kind of a little bit of a stigma against people that have either had it or have it or are afraid of getting it still and I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to go into my personal health details with everybody to be quite honest.

But I feel like at this point um it’s just important to share our story because I find through my experience that when I am able to hear from other people who have experienced the same thing or something similar then it’s helpful to me and it makes me I guess less worried if that maybe is the case or that it’s not only me that things are happening too so

George: and after having gone through it um I feel like now we can share our experience a little clearer and we waited until we were completely clear of the covid to decide whether talk about it or share our experience just so we could share with you from beginning to end how we felt and how we feel now.

Lisa: yeah so let’s go ahead and let’s just start from the beginning so I had been being very careful uh about getting exposed to Covid because my mother who’s 83 years old was supposed to be coming to stay with us for several months this summer and I needed her to be she needed to get picked up from Florida um around July 16th and so starting in June you know more cases were happening and I was funny I was mainly concerned about our teenagers bringing covid in and out of the house I wasn’t even as worried about me getting it because I had been wearing my mask and we weren’t really doing a lot a ton of socializing. We were kind of keeping it to a small group and just sort of doing a lot of things on our own and um

George: for us, we were basically doing nothing

Lisa: Yeah so that’s that also contributed to why we had no podcast because there’s nothing to talk about besides just like miserable coveted stuff that we didn’t really want to talk about and we weren’t traveling and fortunately I’ve had a super busy year so far in real estate which is the only positive thing despite all this pandemic stuff but so we’ve been being very careful and I had been tested so my son we had a little graduation party for him because he graduated from high school and we had about I don’t know maybe 15 20 people over maybe the house um I wasn’t a large guy no I mean because it was like our family is there’s six of us plus his sister and the kids.

So kind of you know a small group anyways and uh George’s parents actually had driven up so we were really cautious with them too they’re also in their uh the late 70s and so following Monday so we had a little cookout on Saturday and the following Monday one of the kids said their friend called and their friend that they were with last week had been exposed and then another kid called and said.

George: yeah the first one started the ball rolling and then it was like one of our other kid’s friends got exposed and then this one got exposed and they were basically almost like a revolving door at the clinic getting checked.

Lisa: yeah so my oldest daughter was quarantined for three weeks because she had three exposures and she took three tests they all, fortunately, came back negative but she was miserable and um trying to do the right thing by staying quarantined because she’d been exposed and so we kind of did the same thing and I got tested I tested negative and I was feeling positive about that and that was probably around June what 15 ish somewhere around there and then um we stayed home all weekend and then we were invited to a birthday party and it was just again a small get-together it was going to be at a restaurant that was supposedly outside it ended up being closed and so we had to switch venues at the last minute.

George: plan b

Lisa: yeah so we ended up at this restaurant where the music was really loud and nobody was wearing a mask and no one was socially distancing and I got to be honest I literally did feel just uncomfortable. Because I was trying to be so careful and I was really worried about getting my mom home. And I kind of I stayed I guess because I didn’t want to be rude and of course I wanted to be there with my friends.

So I talked myself out of being worried about it so that was like on Monday and then we went to Hilton head for our anniversary and we had a great dinner just George and I went out and then woke up on Friday morning and I had a cough and I didn’t feel good. And I thought well maybe we just had so many cocktails last night and there were this Sahara dust and I just kind of explained it away.

And fortunately we kind of kept to ourselves all that weekend too and ended up going home on Monday. And I had a call from Friday Saturday Sunday and I said I gotta go get tested again I was just too paranoid so sure enough I went in and I got tested and George got tested also and so we’re in line out there with our mass we got there at 7: 30 in the morning. And so like say that was on Monday and they said it takes two to three days to get your results back so on Wednesday we get a phone call from the clinic that we went to but it was a voicemail we didn’t actually speak to a person and it said your test results were negative and so we were like wow I was like wow and now by this point on Monday George come down with a fever and really bad body aches actually like right?

George: Yeah I mean it knocked me out I’ve had fevers before I’ve had the flu before I’ve had body aches but this one was in its own world I just I couldn’t do anything I didn’t I don’t want to do anything as a matter of fact I, unfortunately, missed my son’s graduation high school graduation because I just the fever was, first of all, I had a fever so I didn’t want to go out and spread it but I just did not want to get out of bed that that’s how bad I felt.

Lisa: at that point I made a post on Facebook like this is crazy I can’t believe we tested negative you know we’re sick and a girlfriend of mine who was in line happened to be in line with us at the same time at the clinic messaged me privately and said hey was that your antibodies test your Covid test? And I was like gee they didn’t say which one I would have thought that this is the Covidtest I mean why would they call me and tell me it was negative and not except for Covid.

So long story short um two I messaged the doctor there who happened to be a friend of mine thankfully and uh he said no your Covid test is actually not back yet and the next day I received a call and that was on Thursday that my test was positive and even though George had symptoms and all of the symptoms of Covid he tested negative so it was

George: Negative! I lost my sense of smell I lost my sense of taste I had a fever I mean I had every box checked off for Covid and I tested negative.

Lisa: yeah so we’re not feeling very confident about the whole testing situation. That’s not the first time I’ve heard that story of her the same story. We have some other really close friends of ours that were exposed and absolutely no symptoms at all and tested positive. And they were frankly shocked when their test results came back positive.

So it causes all of its own problems and everything. But to just kind of talk about actually having Covid and George said he wasn’t able wasn’t even able to get out of his bed. I mean it’s true I get really frustrated now I guess since I’ve experienced it when I see the people that post on there like “it’s just the flu”, “it’s just the bad flu” and I got to be honest, there was a point when George was in that bed and his fever and I mean I had not seen him look that bad that I thought holy crap like this could what if he gets really bad tomorrow like what if it gets worse what is tomorrow going to hold you know and then I started getting sick um so I didn’t get my fever I had probably a week off now probably five days of a cough before my fever came. And then when then I was in the bed too and I had a fever for five days I think when you finally didn’t have a fever anymore you lost your sense of taste.

George: yeah my fever broke and then no it was still while I had my fever because a friend of ours made us this great dinner and she brought it over and I was looking forward to it so bad. She made us some foe and I had not realized it yet but I went to the kitchen and I prepped everything the way, She everything was ready to go I just had to put it together and it never dawned on me that I couldn’t smell what I was prepping. Because I was just so excited I wanted to eat it.

And then Lisa and I sat at the dining room table and when I started eating it I said man I’m a little disappointed I thought this was going to be more flavorful and Lisa was like oh my god! What are you talking about this is fantastic! I was so disappointed because that’s when i lost my sense of taste that moment I was so upset I did it three times oh she kept eating it in front of me and I’m like I can’t smell it I can’t taste it so that aspect of it is really strange and it’s been how long now since we physically had it it’s been over a month?

Lisa: yeah it’s been about six weeks and um we’re

George: we’re still recovering and it’s been six weeks and I still I can smell and I can taste but there I still have some issues with smell

Lisa: it’s like it’s not the same well

George: not even that the other day Lisa made some pico de gallo full of onions and I could not smell one onion I could smell everything else but I couldn’t smell onion is that good or bad I wasn’t tearing up your mask on again the problem is if I got bad onion breath I’ll never know until somebody just points it out. so it’s that that whole thing was really weird

Lisa: so for me in addition to the cough George never got the cough I uh I did get the cough I’ve I had the cough for five weeks finally cleared up uh I’ve had I had to take an antibiotic and a steroid for a week and I think that finally got rid of the final last bit of lingering cough that was there um but mine was the shortness of breath and [Music] again that was one of that kind of things where you’re like hold on a minute is this going to get worse you know like how short of breath is short of breath to go to the hospital kind of a question as I walked from my bedroom so I have a heart rate monitor watch um and it keeps track of my heart rate and from leaving my bed going into the laundry room and switching some sheets over or some towels over into the dryer my heart rate was up to 130.

And even i said like three weeks after when we were done uh we finally we came down with covid in the middle of renovating two bathrooms and cleaning out our three-car garage. so we finally had to get back out there our neighbors probably hated us because there was a bunch of crap on the on the driveway and i’m sorry and we said okay 45 minutes we got to get this stuff put in the house and i mean all i did was move things from like literally 10 feet from the outside driveway to in the garage and my heart rate was almost 160. I had to go inside and sit down and

George: yeah your heart rate spiked I was so short of breath that

Lisa: exhaustion!

George: And we kind of wrote part of it off to you know we went on lockdown for at that point four weeks oh yeah and we kind of just stayed in our room

Lisa: and not only that where we’re not just quarantined but we were quarantined in our bedroom in our house so it was like additional quarantine

George: right we wanted to give ourselves an extra week so that we wouldn’t contribute to the spread we wanted to make sure that we were done with it and granted we didn’t part of it was just lack of exercise lack of doing anything we we just became

Lisa: we couldn’t I was tired

George: teaching yeah we at one point we couldn’t do it and then so going back to what lisa said when we went to clean out the garage I mean I was exhausted after 10 minutes of just moving three boxes yeah it was and we looked at each other and we just said okay we’re done here i mean let’s we we can’t continue we don’t know if this is going to make it worse if what you know the biggest part was lisa’s heart rate i mean it just skyrocketed.

Lisa: so I’m still having issues with my heart rate and we’re a month and a half out six weeks out my i still have my heart rate monitor watch going on and my heart rate is still really really high so even as we’re just sitting here talking on our um podcast it’s my heart rate’s 114. So that’s kind of like basically doing nothing sitting in the air condition um on a positive note I lost like six pounds I guess my body thinks I’m working out all the time but I do find myself getting really tired and um I’ve seen I’ve like reached out to some other people um through Facebook and things like that that have the same symptoms with the covid um with the heart rate and I’m hoping that in a couple of months it’ll be something that finally heals and can go back to normal life and exercise.

George: After having gone through this experience I would just say to everybody to take it seriously do your part wash your hands wear a mask just I know it’s a pain in the ass I know we’re not used to it nobody wants to wear a mask there’s controversy about that whether that’s helping not helping at this point it doesn’t matter we should all just do our part to at the very least try to not spread it um but I will also say that after having gone through it I’m sorry but I still just think that it’s a really bad strand of the flu um I had a high fever typical flu uh exhaustion typical flu muscle aches typical flu I would just say it’s the flu on steroids.

Lisa: Well I’ve never had the flu and well welcome I’ve also never never had heart issues like this right and that I mean

George: that’s more scary to me and that’s what i was going to get to it it’s it’s the flu with longer lingering side effects and that’s the scary part and that’s i think why we’re losing elderly people or people that have underlying issues because of the long lasting effects or the really bad side effects so let’s all just be careful wash our hands wear our masks and we’ll all get through this.

Lisa: So that is our covid experience uh take it with uh whatever brain assault um we’re happy to answer any questions you can reach out to us at rviewpodcast.com and next we’re going to talk to you in our next podcast about positive things our first week back traveling and our trip to key west so stay tuned for that podcast!