Covid for Two (part one): Vertigo Hurl, and the Trash Can Toss

or, Further Along the Great Inbetween (in four parts)

As we scroll backwards to try to understand how and when it started, we retrace our steps.  Within the 5 days before Dan started running a fever, we had camped out on the desert with two vandwelling friends.  It was cold and windy, so we didn't get much time around the campfire together, just an hour or so at sunset.  We enjoyed one good night camped near each other, in our own vans.  None of us were sick, and neither of them have become ill.

Within 5 days of Dan's first fever, he helped another vandwelling friend patch a hole in his gas tank out on the desert.  It was a particularly windy and dusty day, so he felt compelled to walk down our street videotaping the palm trees dropping leaves when he was done, to show the folks on Facebook. When he developed a headache and sinus congestion, we chalked it up to dust on the wind.  When he started running a fever, we let our friends know right away.  The friend he helped with the gas tank issue also never got sick. We are so grateful that no one we were in contact with became ill.

Dan was already feeling the effects of too many windy, dusty days in a row and may have had a little bit of a sinus infection brewing.  In any case, his symptoms came on slowly at first, but progressed quickly.  Dizziness, vertigo, headache, fatigue, achiness, with a fever of 99 to 102. Gastrointestinal complaints kept him shuffling from bed to bathroom. 

At that point, I was still feeling fine. I was doing my best to help him manage his practical needs, chart his fever, and keep track of his herbal and medicinal intake.  I doubled up on vitamins for both of us and made sure I was resting when he rested, in between all of the worrying, hoping, and praying.

A week went by, and Dan’s fever subsided, for the most part.  Deep fatigue, headaches, and a dry cough stayed. This kept him miserable, wishing to lay flat and to be left alone to try to sleep in the darkened bedroom, with or without doggie bed companions.  I had never seen him sick for more than three days in a row, in the seven years we have known each other.

I cooked up a big batch of rice in the Instant Pot, as the base for a batch of ham fried rice big enough to feed us for week.  I inventoried the various frozen soups, beans, and cooked meats that we had on hand.  Along with canned, dry, and dehydrated goods, medicinal herbs and medications, and neighbors who would run for anything else at a moment's notice, I felt sure that we had a good chance at getting through this without leaving Camp Cordray. Being “preppers” had saved our hides many times.  We were set.

At this, his one-week point, I was stuffy from the dust, but was showing no other symptoms.  He was holding steady and wasn't getting any worse.  Then late that night, I decided to move to the couch.  Dan was tossing and turning, snoring loudly in my ear.  I thought I could catch a few winks out there and then join him again after the first dog wanted to be let out to pee. 

The minute my head hit the pillow on the couch, the entire room flipped upside down.  “Oh, ohhhhhh,” I screamed. “Ohh noooooo!” Dan came as quickly as he could manage to find me rolling and retching from an attack of vertigo.  I had experienced vertigo as a solo vandweller, camped out on the desert at Craggy Wash near Lake Havasu City, Arizona.  On that night I had no choice but to lock Miss Liberty in the van and sleep on the cold, hard ground on an Army blanket to keep the world from spinning away and flinging me off.  It was one of the worst nights of my life.  For a brief second, I thought I was having a stroke.  Then the memories came flooding back. I knew what was happening, and I pretty much knew why.

Dan was dazed and confused and couldn't find a big barfing bowl, so he brought the kitchen trash can.  I lunged for it, but lost my balance and slid off the couch, dumping the contents of the nearly full trash can all over the living room floor (tile, luckily).  I saw him look down at the wet coffee grounds and vegetable scraps as I made my way to the bathroom to hurl, and then to the bed.  I could not help.  Yep, it was now us, and not just him. 

The rest of that night I tried hard not to move a single inch.  I didn't want to risk starting the room spinning or upchucking my stomach contents in the bed.  As soon as the sun came up and we were both still alive, I began forcing myself into an upright position for as much time as I could manage every day, preferably out into the sunlight.  I needed to feel the sandy ground beneath my bare feet.  I needed to appeal to the Great Spirit for his wisdom and assistance.  I needed to find my center so I would not panic.

I needed to gather strength to make the remedies, the food, to think about the medicines, to keep an eye on the symptoms.  I needed to sit with this and listen.  But from that stomach tossing introduction, the only word I could come up with about how it felt to have this was hollow.  Achingly empty, hollowed out, winded, waning.

We settled into a routine of blessed Nyquil-basted slumber punctuated by the swallowing of handfuls of vitamins and helpful liquids.  Our neighbors Kim and Tammy both ran for supplies, like turkey and soft wheat bread for sandwiches, dog food, applesauce, eggs, and the like.  So many times, we sung their praises while nourishing our bodies with foods that were easy to prepare and digest. 

How many times we said to each other that we were a short month from being on the road again for the season.  This could have happened somewhere out there.  Here we have neighbors who care, a fenced in yard for the dogs, and a home with a bathroom, shower, kitchen, and bed, enclosed, that doesn't need to be moved anywhere.  Here we have a good doctor attached to a hospital, twenty minutes away.  Here we will do our best to heal and take care ourselves and each other.  And the pups, of course.  What we know to be true at this point is that it’s the beginning of the second week in February, and two out of four of us are Covid positive.

(to be continued)

Brenda Cordray

“The Desert Rose”

Buy Me a Coffee!