Coronavirus Concern Up

[CrealCritter]

 

[CrealCritter]

 

[Britesea]

2 new cases in our county tonight; one travel related and one they think is community-spread. We have to come in on Monday to pick up the laptop (which died last week), but I'm balking every time DH suggests something else "we could use more of". I tell him we have enough of the important stuff for at least 3 months, and I DO NOT want to go out there and be at risk.

 

[mischief]

CV has arrived in my town.

Stay home, dont accept visitors.

 

[Britesea]

Forgive the long post. I found this on Facebook just now. It's from a woman who was diagnosed with Covid-19, and has been taking care of herself at home.

Dear friends,

This is the week many of us will get sick. Social distancing is working, but most cities waited too long to declare shelter-in-place orders and many others have yet to. So, we will see spikes in confirmed cases within the next week or so. I want you all to be armed with pragmatic and useful information if this happens to you or someone you care about.

I am on Day 14 of what was diagnosed as a presumptive positive for COVID-19 after a test for Influenza A and B turned up negative. (I am still waiting for my COVID-19 results.) I've had a relatively mild case, and I'm on the mend. My congestion is clearing up, I can breathe deeply again, and going up and down the stairs doesn't make me winded. My energy and appetite are coming back though I still have had a fever of 100+ for 14 straight days. Most of us will get a mild case. 40-70% of us will get it, but so much of the media frenzy right now is focused on things that were important last week and yesterday (every day feels a year these days, though, to be fair). I have seen shockingly few articles or helpful testimonials advising how best to treat ourselves at home, and, trust me, I've been looking. So much of the information we're focused on now is preventing transmission, but there is woefully little on what to do IF and WHEN we get sick.
Being waylaid during the time that so many folks have been still frantically trying to avoid getting sick has offered me a strange bubble of calm and insight. I'm grateful for that because the fear out there is palpable. I would like for this to be an offering to assuage at least some panic. That is my hope anyway.
The CDC and the WHO have labored and lengthy instructions on how to prevent transmission to someone else in the household or orders to quarantine. This creates a new problem for us as caregivers. A potentially critically ill person separated from everyone else drastically reduces a caregiver's ability to monitor, replenish fluids, and generally take care of the person who is sick. On top of that, these two trusted sources offer only the most basic (honestly, negligible) recommendations for treating symptoms: sleep, keep hydrated, and take Tylenol (or the generic acetaminophen). This kind of bare bones advice is, well, skeletal. We all want to know how best to take care of ourselves and each other so that we can avoid having to go to the hospital. We want to be able to recuperate at home because we want to prevent putting a strain on the system and, face it, the idea of going to the hospital in this scenario is downright daunting. The better we know how to nurse ourselves back to health, the better our odds are healing well in our own beds.
So, I wanted to share what I've learned. Please add your own home remedies or links to effective protocols in the comments too. Or point me to a page where someone has a Google doc with remedies that have made others' lives easier, and I'll signal boost it.
Caveat emptors/disclaimers because I'm making this post public and shareable: This is based on my own personal, lived experience. I am not a doctor, so this does not replace or supplant solid medical advice from a professional you trust. I have had relatively mild symptoms but still a longish case. I am one of the freakish 5% who has had never-ending nasal congestion that went into my upper respiratory tract, but I somehow avoided the dreaded cough. YMMV (your mileage may vary). I have no underlying health concerns, I'm 52, a non-smoker, and fortunate. I have a comfortable apartment to myself, and I was able to spend $500 to stock up on essentials before the lockdown and before I got sick. (For the love of all that is holy, I swear I did not stockpile anything, especially TP. Stocking up is simply incredibly expensive. I dwindled my account down to almost my last dollar, since I'm adjunct faculty at two local universities and don't make a whole lot.) Still, that is more than so many of us are able to do, and I am grateful for all that I have. What follows goes a bit beyond common sense, because this virus is unlike anything I've experienced before, even though to be clear, this is certainly a far cry from the sickest I’ve ever been. I hope it can be a boon to friends and strangers alike.
Here are the things I did that helped:
WHILE YOU ARE WELL
1) Start taking your temperature in the morning and at night so that you have a baseline.
One of the first signs of the virus can be a low-grade fever, though this virus does present in different ways. Full disclosure: I was one of those people who had to go to 3 different drugstores on Wed Mar 11 looking for a thermometer amid decimated shelves.
2) Before you get sick, change your diet.
Stop eating and drinking things that will make it harder to fight off the virus. Mellow out on the processed foods, dairy, and sugar (alcohol and gluten are in this category too, sorry).
Increase your intake of immune-boosting foods like green vegetables, fish and other omega-threes, garlic, ginger, and citrus. You don't have to give in to the whole elderberry craze (though it does taste pretty good). Replace coffee with chaga, a fungal immune booster that you can brew into a strong, soothing tea, for a few weeks. I have some for you, if you want/need. We can do a porch drop off, or I can send some to you in the mail once I'm out of quarantine.
If you think these dietary recommendations are extreme, consider that you are in a temporary but dire situation where everything else around us is collapsing. Change your eating habits this month, even if it's just a little for a little while.
3) SLEEP at least 8 hours a night. (I know, I wake up at 4am in a blind panic too. But, still, try.)
4) Make a pot of soup NOW while you are healthy or at the first sign of any symptoms.
This is especially important if you are sheltering in place alone. When/if you get sick, trust me, you won't have energy to cook. You will barely want to eat anything anyway. But you will force yourself to have two bowls of it every day, and it will help. The pot should be big enough so that you can eat from it for a week. Make your favorite broth-based recipe: chicken, vegetable, or bone. Bone is most healing, obviously. Avoid dairy and noodles because these ingredients increase congestion and inflammation. Freeze it if you don't have any symptoms at this point, so you will be able to thaw it when you start to feel oogy.
WHEN YOU GET SICK
1) At the first sign of fatigue, a tickle in your throat, aches, or a fever, go to bed and stay there. SLEEP. Don't try to keep working. Your body needs to heal, and it can do that most effectively when you are sleeping.
A note about early symptoms: from what I've read, they vary a lot. Some have aches and fever, some have a scratchy throat, and some have a constriction in their chest with a dry cough. Headaches, sneezing + nasal congestion, shortness of breath, nausea, and diarrhea have all been reported. I woke up on Mar 14 with a headache, body aches, congestion, and a fever of 101. My fever spiked to 102.5 on Day 2, and I've had a fever of 100+ every day since along with body aches, nasal congestion (my nose opened up like an actual running faucet on day 5), chest tightness and upper respiratory congestion, exhaustion, lack of appetite, and some lower GI distress (though not full-on diarrhea, everything just felt labored and different and, sincere apologies for the vivid image I'm about to put in your head, my poop seemed to be covered in a gauzy cloud). The two aberrations from most commonly reported symptoms: I have only had a negligible cough, and I never had a sore throat. My baseline temp leading up to getting sick was 99, but I am usually a straight-up 98.6 kind of person.
I teach at two universities where adjacent departments had early confirmed cases. I was taking public trans to the Loop and teaching in a building very close to the Chicago's first confirmed case downtown. I had a dinner party the Monday before I got sick, and a friend who helped me in the kitchen came down with the same thing at the same time. My friend has asthma and has had a much harder time of things. But we are both on the road to recovery, in large part because we have been sharing what we've learned, checking in with each other, and doing some intense jobs taking care of ourselves while in isolation. (No one else from the dinner party has gotten sick to date.)
2) DRINK WATER, every 15 minutes when you are awake. Every time you wake up or roll over, drink. It should be room temperature, not cold. Cold liquids exacerbate the illness.
3) Drink WARM liquids like herbal tea and broth. Hot liquids keep everything in your system moving. Make soothing, healing, and warming remedies out of whatever inexpensive supplies you already have available.
4) In the giant void of an antiviral treatment that works on COVID-19, I have turned/returned to plant medicine, and it has helped me a lot
My cousin, who is taking a Chinese medicine course in Singapore right now, sent me directions on how to make a ginger and licorice root decoction that was used throughout China during the Hubei lockdown. Not all of us have access to actual licorice root (as opposed to powdered extract). Chinatown or Devon should have some available. I ordered a #1 bag online. The decoction is easy to make. You bake the licorice in molasses, and then you boil the licorice root and the ginger for an hour. I'll post a picture of the recipe in the comments. The ginger licorice decoction has really helped my friend who also got sick at the same time I did.
Chaga tea has been so incredibly helpful. Alaskan chaga is a mushroom that grows in birch forests in the Arctic winter. It has been known to boost the immune system along with other medicinal properties. (A friend gave me some chaga before I got sick. Once I felt how powerful and good it was, I ordered a small box of it from an ethical harvester in Alaska. If you live in Chicago, I can put some on my porch for you with instructions, and you can brew it for you and your family. Just DM me, seriously.) You can make a large pot of tea with it every day, reserving the chaga and re-steeping it over and over again for at least two weeks, the typical length of this illness. Was it the chaga or the fact that I was drinking a gallon of warm soothing liquid daily, ladling out a mugful every couple of hours, that helped me get better? I'll go with a little of both.
Other natural antiviral immune boosters that might help include vitamin C, C60, and olive leaf extract. My friend made a rice tea by soaking brown rice and flax, warming the liquid, and adding spices you'd find in chai like clove, cinnamon, and cardamom. Making a tea with eucalyptus would also be good. I put a few drops of White Flower on my chest whenever it got really tight. Another friend recommends a couple of drops of oregano oil every day to help keep the bronchi clear. A friend also sent me a wonderful recipe for ginger lemonade. Some people swear by Tulsi tea, reishi and others. I don't have any personal experience with those, but go with what has worked for you and what you already have. Since stores are closed and Amazon has stopped shipping, we have to make do with what we already have. Make a tea with citrus peels and cloves and sliced ginger, if that's what's in your fridge and pantry. People swear by manuka honey, but it was $34.99 and I opted to pass it by when I was stocking up.
5) The word on the street is to manage fever with Tylenol or acetaminophen or paracetamol, which are supposed to be more suited to treating respiratory illness than other alternatives. Frankly, I have been taking acetaminophen as sparingly as possible to avoid putting strain on my other organs. Cool compresses work too.
Some people are saying NOT to take Advil and its generic ibuprofen, as they have anecdotally said to propel otherwise healthy people to hospitals for oxygen. There is a lot of noise and confusion in this debate, and I'm going to sidestep this thorny conversation for our purposes.
6) Zinc lozenges and elderberry syrup help with a scratchy throat and cough. A friend of mine prone to bronchitis recommended Myrtol, a German cough syrup made from natural ingredients, including elderberry. If you have a pharma protocol in place for managing a persistent, chronic cough, you are probably already on it.
7) The fatigue is real.
It also becomes really hard to think clearly. That's why it's so important to have soup and tea and other supportive supplies ready ahead of time.
8) When you think you are getting better the first three or four times, STAY IN BED.
The arc of this virus is really rollercoaster-y: up and down and up and down. After the initial alarm passes, (and it is alarming at first because you don't know which way it's going to go and that seizing up can make everything feel worse), I was able to focus on getting better, calmly. I made it through the first scary fever spikes, but right when I thought I was feeling better, I would get knocked down again. There were critical junctures around days 3, 5, and 7 where I was certain I'd turned a corner, and, well, yesterday.
I'd get up and do dishes, take out the trash, take my dog for a walk around the neighborhood (face covered), and try to get some work done (end of quarter grades were due at both my schools and my departments have been preparing like mad to take our classes online in the spring). Then I would feel hot and light-headed again, taking my temp only to see it had sprung back up to 101.5. You will feel better and want to get back up and do things only to get knocked right back down. The moment I ease up on drinking water and tea constantly, I start to feel horrible again.
Remember: YOU ARE ESSENTIALLY PREVENTING YOURSELF FROM DEVELOPING FULL-BLOWN VIRAL PNEUMONIA. I would say the new mantra needs to be SLEEP + DRINK WATER. Start now, to the extent that you can. Please resist the urge to get up and do things. Rest. Do your Zoom meetings from bed with a virtual office background, if you absolutely have to be on a call. But, truly, you shouldn't because this is the time to sleep sleep sleep and binge watch The Good Place (my choice for existential dystopian laughs/insert whatever makes your socks go up and down). For the past few days, my temp has been normal in the morning only to spring back up to 100+ if I try to do too much (e.g. read: ANYTHING). When I let myself sleep, my temp goes back down.
9) A humidifier has helped. Some recommend running a hot shower and sitting in your own makeshift bathroom sauna. Steam eucalyptus or rosemary, if you have any, and inhale deeply. I just made a homemade vaporub with a base of coconut oil and a few drops each of clove, thyme, rosemary, and peppermint oil. It is wonderful.
10) Failing steps 1-9, if you have difficulty breathing or your temperature spikes beyond what you and your doctor are comfortable with (I’ve heard different numbers), please go to the ER immediately.
Some of you will develop dramatic and dangerous symptoms quickly. Please do not wait to seek care if your lungs are struggling beyond what you can manage at home. My advice is geared to keeping as many of us comfortable for as long as it takes to heal, but that obviously is only going to go so far for those who suffer from chronic conditions, are older, or are immunosuppressed. If you have a finger oximeter, and are able to monitor your oxygen levels numerically, then you will know when you have to go to the hospital. But very few of us have those, and they are way sold out.
THE OTHER SIDE
Healing from even a mild case (and mine IS mild) takes about two weeks to a month.
As my dad would day, take it easy. It is unclear how immunity works with COVID-19. Some have said that there was a patient in Japan who tested positive a second time. There is speculation that this, in fact, was a relapse and not re-infection. We need more time to learn about the virus. In the meantime, please give yourselves time to heal.
We don’t know how long immunity lasts, and we don’t know about immunity to slightly different mutated strains even if we have recovered from one of them. I do hope that we get to develop a fair amount of herd immunity in the next year, but, again, there is a lot to learn. We will obviously still need to protect our vulnerable populations, and our society will continue to bend and contort itself around the virus.
But I hope to be in a position to assist when others get sick. I will happily help you to the best of my abilities. Looking to a future I can hardly conceive at the moment, I anticipate learning more about plant medicine. Scientists will develop new antivirals, retrovirals, and vaccines. I look forward to donating plasma as part of a treatment for those who get sick in the future, whenever that near-distant moment may be.
And thank you, friends. I am good. I have everything I need. My inner circle is incredible (I love you, mom!). I have been quarantined since developing symptoms and went out for a half hour only to get tested (thank you, Howard Brown for your invaluable service). No one else I spent time with beforehand has gotten sick (except my one friend whose illness coincided with mine, and they are also struggling a bit today with the ups and downs. Please hold them in your thoughts).
May you and your loved ones stay healthy. Or, more to the point, may we all get well and stay well. Sending love to all corners.

 

[Mini Horses]

Essentially, same as most colds/flu as to treatments. Maybe longer, probably more fatigue, more lung attacking issues. But they are right, not a lot out there to say how it feels and what has helped. Not too many have been able to think thru and post such info. A really hot shower is one of my favorite things (when not sick) as I miss my hot tub! But the hot water & steam just make you feel so much better. Even for allergies.

I have plenty of black tea....black coffee....soup broths and this summer -- NEVER before, mind you -- this summer I felt "driven" to pick elderberry !! To the point that I was thinking I had gone mad....it was an obsession! I made juice, syrup, froze some whole berries, dehydrated berries, etc. But, I am taking a decent slug of strong juice every AM & PM. Thankful for the driving force of 8 months ago!

A good vitamin/min, CQ-10, D3, C & Bs all have been daily for a long time. Guess it makes me feel my immune has/is being handled the best I can for a long time, especially with eating healthy. Can I get the virus? Sure. Just that I hope I will be one of the mild ones, if I do. PLUS, I want to be part of the 30% who are not going to be personally experiencing this thing.

 

[Britesea]

Another possible.... Don't know if it will help with Covid-19 the way it does with influenza, but... maybe?

Yale researchers find the keto diet may help tame the flu

Yale researchers found that the high-fat, low-carb diet, known as keto, could tame the flu. The diet activates the release of T cells in the lungs that traps the virus before it become worse.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[framing fowl]

I think I'm going to start some bone broth tomorrow. Certainly wouldn't be a bad thing to have on hand.

 

[CrealCritter]

Social distancing has been extended to April 30th https://apnews.com/7d851c87c07a7e0f67c245abe0d86e56

The numbers in that article are astounding.

I missed the president's press briefing today. So just going by the AP article

 

[Mini Horses]

Internet sure seems slower! Guess it's getting even more use now.