I’m not one to really dip into trends, but I actually do have a story to tell about this disease that is making us all distance ourselves from one another. Here’s my story about how I think I caught the Corona Virus last November.

A Table for four

Every week, my wife, myself, and our friends have a near-standing date. Just about every week, we go to a local Mexican food restaurant. We do this just about every week, or when we have something to celebrate, or once our friend comes home from a work trip. For most of the fall, our friend had to fly to China. He made a few trips there and to Australia. Every time he returned home, we would always go out to eat.

My friend just returned from China and we would all be traveling to Thailand in just days to celebrate another friend’s wedding. We gathered. We ate and celebrated our upcoming trip. Talking about the dread of the flight and how excited we were to go to someplace new. Within twenty-four hours all four of us would be traveling separately to Thailand.

Thailand

This was the longest flight I’ve ever taken. Even though we travel often, we had only been to Europe once before. Most of my travel staying relatively close to home. While my wife had been to Vietnam a couple of times, and Peru more than she can remember.

My wife and I left Houston on a Friday night and landed in Bangkok on what I think was a Sunday. Traveling over the timezone line makes things kind of crazy. Once we landed, we headed to our hotel and took a nap, both of us feeling exhausted after the time travel we had just done.

But we couldn’t sleep the entire time, there were wedding activities to attend to! We struggled to wake up, but we managed to and headed out to a great dinner with friends.

After dinner, we went back to the hotel to sleep. The next day, we woke up and went out to explore this beautiful and crazy city. We both felt fine after a night’s rest. We got Thai Massages, rode in a tuk-tuk, saw the Golden Palace, and took pictures all over the place.

After the Palace, we met up with our friends from Houston, whom we hadn’t seen since our celebration in Houston. We stopped and got a drink at a little hotel and then explored the city, using mostly the subway.

That night, we went to a night market where we saw people buying and eating fried scorpions. We tried the smellest fruit, durian.

It was an interesting night. But as the night went on, we all felt fine.

Fever

The next morning when I woke up, I had chills and felt like I was having some really mild asthma. There wasn’t much for us to do that day since we were leaving Bangkok and heading to Chiang Mai, so I tried to stay hydrated and just take it easy. I didn’t want my fever to spike or get worse. Other than those two symptoms, I felt okay.

I chugged a bunch of water and actually started to feel much better. That night, I went to the planned wedding activities and felt almost 90%. I was even able to walk back to our hotel with plenty of energy.

The next morning though, my fever had come back and it was much stronger than before. We were on vacations so we didn’t bring a thermometer, but my fever felt high enough that I felt like I needed to get in a cold bath to break the fever. The tepid water in the bath felt ice-cold to me. I shivered and really hated it. But my fever broke.

My only symptoms were still the fever and a very mild cough. Earlier, at the end of summer, I had gotten some kind of infection and had a fever and no other symptoms. Other than that I had been pretty healthy for a long period of time. I thought it was just some type of flare-up at the time, so I just tried to manage it.

I continued to take it easy, but I was on the other side of the planet. We got some pain relievers and a Z-pack and continued on with my travels.

But my fever came back and I was starting to cough more. Luckily, I never felt like I couldn’t breathe.

When I returned to the hotel that afternoon, I took a shower and started to shiver. I couldn’t really control my body. That night, I decided to stay in and watched movies while everyone else went out.

The next morning, my wife got a thermometer at the pharmacist as well as some Gatorades. I want to say that my fever probably got up to 104 degrees, but honestly, it was all a bit of a daze these months later.

The Spread

The next morning we heard that our friend from Houston, who had traveled to China, had gotten sick as well. We both had fevers and coughs. I was starting to feel better, but he was getting worse. Still, I couldn’t kick the illness. It would get better for a while and then come back.

I had gotten sick on the second day of a nine-day trip. Luckily, I felt out of commission only one night and one morning. I was able to still do most of the trip, but, I feared that I was going to spread it. Luckily, my friend and I were the only ones that produced symptoms.

Returning Home

I didn’t have a fever on the way home from Thailand, but I’m pretty sure I did once I got home. My cough, dry and nonproductive continued for a long time. We had tried to get something to suppress my cough at a pharmacist in the Airport. They gave me pills that did seem to work.

We got home, but I still didn’t feel right for the next week.

At the time, I just thought that I had the flu or had gotten a viral infection of some kind – which it seems it did. Sitting here in social distancing, I wonder if I had the Corona Virus. If I had known about the disease, I would have done a few things differently, like stayed away from people. It is crazy though, that no one else got sick on the trip.

I wish that we had gone to the doctor. I was scared to go, even though Thailand has a great healthcare system. I’m pretty sure we both had the Corona Virus, although we didn’t get tested for it. The only way now to tell if we truly did have the disease would be to test for antibodies, but I don’t want to add to the hysteria to get that checked.

I have reached out to a doctor that is working on a cure for COVID-19 and told him my story. He says there’s no way to do anything right now.

So did I have the Corona Virus? It sure could have been. What do you think? let me know in the comments below.