Couple recovers from COVID-19

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This article was published 20/04/2020 (2092 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kristie and Todd Walker are thankful to be alive and well following weeks of living with COVID-19.

The Souris couple contracted the virus following a trip to Nashville, Tenn., with a group of friends in mid-March.

Restrictions on returning travellers to self-isolate for 14 days hadn’t yet kicked in, and they had no trouble getting through the airport in Winnipeg.

“Nothing had really blown up yet,” Kristie said on Saturday.

Still, they had kept up on the news while on vacation and knew what was happening with the global pandemic.

They made a decision to head straight home from the airport and begin self-isolating.

At first they felt fine, Kristie said, but then they started experiencing mild symptoms — coughs, runny noses, headaches — that they attributed to being on vacation for four days.

Meanwhile, one of their friends who had gone with them on the trip, a woman from Winnipeg, became ill and tested positive for COVID-19.

Health officials contacted the Walkers and they were tested for the virus on March 25.

The results came back positive four days later.

“By the time we got tested and were a positive, we (had) high fevers, couldn’t breathe, bad headaches, tight chests,” Kristie said. “You couldn’t taste anything, you couldn’t smell anything.

“You felt like you were in a car accident,” she said.

“It went from being you were OK, and then we were planning at one point ‘OK, so what if we go to the hospital? What if one of us doesn’t come out of the hospital?’ It was terrifying.”

The couple kept each other going, with Tylenol and Gravol their only medication.

“You’d go from having really bad fevers, which would kind of knock you down, and you’d kind of get over that and then the other person would get sick with the same kind of thing. We were trying to nurse each other,” she said.

They would feel better for a day, get something accomplished around the house, and then it would hit them again like a sledgehammer.

“It’s pretty scary when you’re hearing what’s on the news,” Kristie said. “People are dying.”

Kristie, 34, owns a local seed company while Todd, 58, sells seeds with a different company.

“We’re from a small community, so we were obviously the first two (cases of COVID-19) here,” she said.

Their weeks of suffering made them thankful they do live in a small, friendly community such as Souris.

Friends, neighbours and local businesses dropped off groceries, care packages, medication and meals at their front door. They even brought treats for their two dogs, Rocky and Ruby.

People walking by waved from a safe distance to make sure they were still OK.

“The community was awesome,” Kristie said. “It was amazing.”

Meanwhile, public health workers checked in on them every day, as well as their family doctor.

They finally emerged from isolation on Thursday, feeling good as new.

Now that their ordeal is over, the Walkers want to make sure others take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously.

They want people to make responsible decisions about which trips are essential and which are not and to stay home as much as possible. 

“Know that anybody can get it,” Kristie said. “We washed our hands, we did all the things.”

Todd agrees.

“People really need to take this seriously and really do the self-distancing from others,” he said, adding they need to follow all the public health recommendations to avoid getting and spreading the virus.

“I think it’s good that they’re scared, because they should be,” Kristie said. “I mean, people are getting really sick.”

 » brobertson@brandonsun.com