By Eleanor Kazdan, May 7, 2020 — In mid-March, twelve days after returning from Mexico, my husband developed symptoms of COVID-19 and although I immediately distanced from him, slept in a separate room, I developed symptoms three days later and we both tested positive. His illness was incredibly mild—four days even before he got tested his symptoms completely went away, but I was not so lucky and I was, what I know now, mildly ill at home for two weeks. It was incredibly scary because it wasn’t going away and I kept reading about how after a week it can either get better or can get worse, and mine was not getting better. I had a fever, I was in bed and I had the greatest outpouring of support from my friends, my family, people from my past. It was actually exhausting trying to keep up with the texts and the phone calls, but it made a huge difference.
I was basically more or less in bed for two weeks and I had all the symptoms, which I won’t go into: a little trouble breathing, incredible exhaustion (I could barely walk a step for about a week), and I was so grateful when finally, after two weeks of fever it went away. The worst time of the day was in the morning when I took my temperature and every day I had a fever, not really high, but it just wasn’t going away.
So finally, after exactly two weeks, my fever went away and I considered myself better. I have been in the house and not even walking around for two weeks and it was a beautiful sunny day, so this is the best day of quarantine so far, a beautiful sunny day. My husband said, “Do you feel up to taking a drive?” So I said, “Yes,” and we got in the car and we drove and it was just like a miraculous dream. I really felt, first of all, really grateful that I had survived and we drove to the back of the Art Museum where there’s a beautiful azalea garden which many of you may have been to. Because it was April, the azaleas were in full bloom and we got out of the car. I was very weak but I managed to walk to the azalea garden. There were a lot of people there not social distancing and not wearing masks, and it felt very miraculous to me to have survived COVID-19 and to see the beautiful flowers and the trees. So like a lot of people, for various reasons, I feel very blessed and very grateful.