Caring For Someone With COVID-19 At Home: A Personal Account CDMJ Follow Mar 15 · 11 min read

Jacob has been isolated here, in our guest room, since February 29th. We still are sleeping in separate rooms until he is no longer showing symptoms.

I wrote an essay a few of days ago about our struggles to get my husband tested for COVID-19, and the response has been overwhelming. When I wrote the essay, I felt like I was just shouting into the void… feeling so helpless and frustrated. I certainly was not expecting our story to resonate with so many people, and I definitely was not expecting the internet to be nice about it! I mean, I didn’t have pictures of kittens or anything and everyone was still nice.

We have been making lots of jokes about “going viral” and “being an infectious topic” at home, but I was very much taken aback by how kind and understanding people have been.

I also received a huge amount of questions about his symptoms and what medications worked and what didn’t. People are scared and trying to prepare for this as best they can as things all over the country are being cancelled or closed.

I’m going to try to go into a little more detail of what medicines and care worked best, and I will follow up with another post going into more detail about his symptoms.

He is doing much better than he was, but is still not well yet. I would say he has recovered to a point where now it feels like he has a regular cold, but it has taken us about 20 days to get here.

Quick background info: Jacob got sick on February 25/26th, and we thought it was just a cold. It got progressively worse over the course of 5 days before we went to the doctor. Our doctor suspected Jacob of having COVID-19, and tried to have him tested on March 2nd, but we were denied. She tried several more times, but we were denied again for the third time on March 13th. We live in a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom house. He has been isolated in our guest room since February 29th. We live in Colorado Springs, Colorado USA. You can read my first essay here.

W hat Worked For Us

We tried a LOT of stuff before we saw a doctor and they suspected COVID-19. Our doctor did say that Jacob’s sore throat was atypical, but that he still fit the symptoms for COVID-19. What works for us, might not work for you.

NOTE: We are not doctors, or medical professionals of any kind. I am not recommending anybody to take any of these drugs. Please talk to your doctor to make sure you take what is right for you. Also, I’m not a journalist or professional writer.

Jacob is a healthy and active 33 year old man who is 6'4" and 185lbs, with no history of any health problems (aside from occasionally smashing his fingers at work).

So many drugs! These are the ones we used, and some we are STILL using

TL:DR The Quick-n-Dirty List:

Prepare an Isolation Room NOW

Humidifier (!),

Thermometer,

Electrolyte Drink Mix,

Guaifenesin (expectorant),

Dextromethorphan (cough suppressant),

Diphenhydramine (Benadryl, antihistamine/sleep aid),

Ibuprofen and Acetaminophen and Naproxen (NSAIDs, pain relief/fever reducer)

We kept a notepad next to his bed. Anytime he took something we wrote it down. We definitely did not want to overdo it with NSAID’s

Take notes: It makes it easier to share with doctors or medics, or people who are caring for you. If you’re caring for someone else, take notes for them. We didn’t start keeping track of what medications he was taking until Saturday 2/29, which was day 4 of symptoms. After that, we tracked what he took and when, so we could make sure that he wasn’t taking too much. Our doctor recommended that he alternate acetaminophen and ibuprofen so as not to overdose.

Prepare a “Sick” Room NOW: Prepare the room now, because we will all inevitably know someone who gets sick, and we should all be prepared to help care for someone. I was on the phone with my sister in Dallas who was feeling nervous and unprepared (as most of us have been feeling) so I told her the best thing she can do while stuck at home, is to prepare for a sick person. It might be her, our dad, her boyfriend, or someone else who is on their own. She felt better having something to focus on.

We are lucky enough to have a guest room where we could isolate Jacob while he was sick. Since we just bought our house, we didn’t have everything we needed to keep someone in there for an extended period of time, so we had to get a few things. I went out and bought two more sets of sheets, to make it easier to change them everyday or every other day. We didn’t have any bedside tables, so I improvised and bought some folding TV trays and they worked great. I also moved all the boxes and stuff we hadn’t unpacked yet so there were fewer things to carry germs. We moved at TV into the room, set up the humidifier and a lamp, and voila, we had a super cozy room for him to be miserable in!

Humidifier: During the worst of it, Jacob was taking upwards of 3 or 4 hot showers per day, because the hot steam was the only thing to give his sore throat some relief. He would even sit on the bathroom floor when I took showers just to be in the steam. We had him set up with a warm-mist humidifier in his room, but I also had an extra large 4-gallon humidifier I used to keep the humidity in the whole house up (the air in Colorado is always very dry). Our house is usually at about 20% humidity, but since he’s been sick we’ve been keeping it around 50% in the whole house, and about 60–70% in his room. Even now when he is recovering, he feels better when the humidity is up and the temperature is up. (this is how I know he’s definitely still sick, he never likes it warm or humid at home, and now I’m the one wishing we could turn the thermostat down!)

Thermometer: Get one. Track temperatures and record them. Don’t be dummies like us and caught off guard. We just moved and didn’t know where ours was, but we didn’t think it was a big deal at the time. We were very wrong. As of now, in the USA, getting tested is still a big problem. Make sure you go to the doctor with all the informational-ammo you can so you can get tested.

Electrolyte Drinks and Tea: Keeping hydrated is SUPER important. We just get the powdered drink because it’s easier, but occasionally we’ll buy some different flavors of bottled Gatorade. They also make tablets, like Nuun (I like their flavors better). Also TEA! We’re already big tea drinkers, but we would add honey when his throat was the worst to soothe the pain. Jacob is now recovering but definitely still sick, and his new routine includes hot tea every morning and every night before bed to help loosen all the crud in his lungs. Even if it hurts, you have to drink something. Tired of sweet drinks or tea? Drink broth. Just keep hydrating!

Guaifenesin (Expectorant): This has been the most important drug for us starting at about day 6. That’s when the lung butter appeared, and the expectorant has made a huge difference in coughing that crud up. Warning: this is gross! When he started getting slightly better, he started coughing up big nasty chunks of mucus. This is what the expectorant is all about. He couldn’t always make it to the sink in time, so sometimes he had to spit them into the little trash can next to his bed. We started changing his trash can twice a day at that point (I wore gloves when doing that, because yuck).

Dextromethorphan (Cough Suppressant): This seems contradictory with an expectorant, but it gave him so much relief from coughing-pain and allowed him to sleep better so he didn’t wake up coughing every 45 minutes. At the worst he really could only sleep for 45 min at a time. After 2 or 3 days of that, he was very literally a zombie of the man he was before. I would be talking to him and I could see his eyes kind of unfocus, not to mention the look of desperation that just lived on his face at that time. It was horrible. He was finally able to sleep after we got the Codeine Guaifenesin cough syrup from the doctor, but after he used that for 4 days we switched to a cough suppressant, expectorant, and pain reliever (acetaminophen or ibuprofen). He still was not, and is not now, sleeping all through the night, but it got better gradually. First he would go 2 hours without coughing, then 4 hours, and now he only wakes up about once per night with a coughing fit.

Diphenhydramine: Known by the common brand name Benadryl here in the US, the little pink pills are an antihistamine used for allergies… but wait, there’s more! If you look at bottles of many non-habit-forming sleep aids, it’s the same exact thing, just little blue pills and a higher price point. Don’t pay more for blue pills, get the little pink ones that are really cheap and are great for knocking you out. Jacob has been using these to help get to sleep through this entire ordeal, and is still taking them to get sleep now. They’re cheap and easy to find all over the US, but might not be in Europe. My sister in the Czech Republic had a harder time finding them, but she was also trying to order them from the pharmacy online since she is self-isolating. She might have better luck next week when she goes to the pharmacy in person.

Pain Relievers: These are also fever reducers. Make sure you talk to your doctor about how much to take, and follow the instructions on the bottle. We used Ibuprofen and Acetaminophen and Naproxen Sodium on a rotation. All of these can be very dangerous, so please be cautious.

This is our neti pot. It’s a tiny teapot for your nose! Very weird I know, but it works great.

Decongestants: Jacob was congested slightly at the beginning, very congested during the worst of it, and now back to slightly during recovery. We used a variety of different decongestants during the course of his illness, but the one that worked the best was the Neti Pot. It feels super weird pouring salty water into your nose, but man, the look of relief on his face right away told me it was definitely worth it. He still uses a nasal-spray each night before going to bed to help him sleep, but really any decongestant will work fine.

Other Supplies: We went through lots of kleenex, canned soup, and jello for about 10–15 days. And petroleum jelly for his nose! I used lots of cleaning supplies trying to keep up with cleaning things in his room and our bathroom, and lots and lots of laundry. I ended up buying an extra set of hand towels, since we were using them so much. With the extras, I was able to change out the hand towel every day for about 4–5 days before washing all the dirty ones. I also washed dishes every day so he would have clean dishes for soup, tea, or whatever. I’m sure our water bill will be horrifying when it comes in, but not much I can do about that since we have to keep things clean.

What Didn’t Work (for us)

Cough Drops or Lozenges or Throat Spray: they worked for day one and day two, but by day three they weren’t making any difference on his sore throat. So I got bigger and better ones, trying desperately to find something that would help him. We tried lozenges with oral analgesics to try and numb his throat, throat sprays, and even supercharged cough drops with 10% menthol. None of them worked. By day 4, his throat was so sore, the menthol in the lozenges actually made him feel worse. He said it felt like they were drying out his throat even more, and made it hurt worse. We now have a huge arsenal of cough drops that I feel a little stupid for buying. We’ll at least be able to use them for future colds.

Gargling Liquid Lidocaine: Yeah, this one is weird. The PA from the urgent care center gave it to us with instructions to mix it 1 to 1 with liquid Benadryl and to gargle. I’d never seen liquid lidocaine before, but it is super viscous. Kinda like honey. Not easy to gargle. And according to Jacob, even when mixed with the liquid Benadryl it was super hard to gargle. I helped him get it mixed together and watched as he tried, but it just made him cough so hard he went into dry heaves. We tried it again later that day, with the same results. That was the point I started getting really pissed off that we spent so much money to go to urgent care, and they blew us off, so I immediately made an appointment with a doctor at our Kaiser facility the next day. When he saw her the next day, she gave him a real weird look when he told her about this one. She was not impressed with the care we got at the urgent care center.

Carbonated Beverages: When we were sick as kids, mom always gave us ginger ale or some form of lemon-lime soda to calm our tummies or sooth sore throats. So now as adults, we do the same thing. Bad idea this time. The bubbles apparently felt like fire on his throat after day 3, so we immediately switched to Gatorade.

High Acidity Drinks or Food: Same deal as with carbonated drinks, Jacob’s favorites like orange juice or cranberry juice were also liquid fire on his throat, so we stopped using those too. I also made sure not to make any food that was high in acidity, like tomato sauce or things with vinegar/cooking wine in them like marsala sauce.

Final Note:

See? Real People! We like skiing and snowboarding at Loveland Ski area. It’s now closed indefinitely due to COVID-19. Maybe we’ll get to go again next year.

A lot of people have asked if this is real or if we are real… and yes, we are very real people. I do not want to share our full names because we are extremely worried about blowback from this at our jobs. We both work for small local businesses, and do not want to risk our jobs or the jobs of our coworkers. I am happy to answer questions, but please respect our privacy.