We Had COVID-19

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Hey, welcome to the Naked Marriage podcast. We are Dave and Ashley Willis, and on this podcast, we address the truth about sex, intimacy, and lifelong love. And we've got a really unique bonus episode for you today. As many of you know, we both got diagnosed with COVID 19 about a month ago. And we just, we've had a lot of people ask, what was it like? What was it like being sick? What was, what were the symptoms? What did you guys do, both of you being sick together? We did a Facebook live video about it a few weeks ago, and it was one of the most watched videos we've ever done. And so it just made us realize people seem to want to hear about this. So let's do a bonus podcast episode where we can really talk about it.

That's right. We're going to give you all the details, so let's dive in.

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Oh, man. Talking about COVID let me tell you, it was a doozy, to say the least.

It was. Yeah.

And, you know, a lot of people are like, well, how did it start? How did you know? And so we're going to give you the whole scoop. It started really late one night. We had actually gone on a date that night feeling okay, but feeling tired. But we actually had just moved, and so we just kind of chalked it up to moving. And, you know, anybody who's moved, you know exactly what we're talking about. Well, all of a sudden, around, I don't know, 11pm Dave comes to me, doesn't look like himself, and he said, sweetie, I'm just not feeling right. I'm just not feeling right. Something's wrong. He's like, my throat feels a little sore. I just. My energy's really off. My brain's kind of in a fog, and I'm like, oh, goodness. You know, and we didn't immediately. To be honest with y', all, we did not immediately think Covid. We thought, our bodies are run down. There's also other things going around. I mean, this could be a cold. But let me tell you one thing. Dave is healthy as a horse. Like, this guy rarely gets sick. I know, right? He never, like, he doesn't have any allergies, food, or seasonal, and he really gets sick. So, like, in our marriage, I can literally count on one hand the times he's been sick. But when he does get sick, it's usually, like, strep throat or really bad flu or something like that. So I was a little bit concerned.

Well, I don't have nearly the pain tolerance that Ashley has. I've watched her give birth to four children. She's way tougher than me. And so, like, she could be sick and have a broken arm and be bleeding from the head, and she's like, I'm fine. I just need an aspirin. It's fine.

I don't know about that.

And with me, like, I don't get sick that often, but when I get sick and it's even something little, like a cold I get, you know, I just lay in bed and whine like, sweetie, please take care of me. Come and rub my feet. No, it's not quite that bad. But when I do get sick, it tends to hit me a little bit harder.

Yeah.

And with COVID it was. It was as sick as I've ever felt. It was as tired as I've ever felt. And, you know, I don't, like, say this to, like, scare you, because, you know, thankfully, we've come through it. We're feeling totally fine now. I don't want you to. To, like, live in fear or terror of this, but it was worse than I thought it would be. Like, when I was kind of watching about COVID on the news, I thought, oh, this all kind of seems, like, exaggerated. And for that couple weeks that we were sick, I mean, it was scary at times. Honestly, not scary that we were ever even in the hospital to that point, but just scary in that we were facing something that we'd never experienced. It was a kind of sickness that was unlike anything we'd had. You know, in some ways, it felt like the flu, but it was, you know, much more severe and much more longer lasting. But it was also just peculiar in the way that it would operate because the symptoms would kind of keep changing, and then you would start feeling like you were maybe feeling better, and then it would start all over again with something else. And it kind of did that for the better part of two weeks. So, like Ashley was saying, for me, it started with exhaustion, headache, body aches. You know, I was laying in bed, My body temperature was off. It was like I was sweating but shivering at the same time. It just felt really weird. And then, you know, woke up the next morning and still felt really bad. And kind of the progression of my symptoms, our symptoms ended up being similar, but also different. You know, I had fever, chills, body ache, headache, exhaustion. At the beginning, some of that stuck around. Exhaustion especially stuck around. Then my stomach started getting uneasy. I never really had any kind of, like, violent nausea, but I just had no appetite. My stomach felt off the whole time. And then about four or five days into it, I lost the sense of taste and smell, which had never happened to me before. I could not taste a thing. You know, my kids didn't believe me, and so I let my old. One of my sons, Connor, who's like our prankster, I said, here's a bowl. Anything in the pantry, Any edible thing you can find, any sauces, any spices, Mix it all up in here, and I'll take a big bite out of it. And so he mixed up the nastiest thing he could come up with. And I took a big bite of it and just chewed. And he. He laughed and cackled. And I was like, I'm serious. I cannot taste a thing. It was really weird. It's also a good diet plan, though, when you can't taste something that maybe they should, like, market just that aspect of COVID It's way better than weight watchers or Jenny Craig or anything that's out there. We. When you just can't taste food and.

Don'T feel it's got that appetizing.

Yeah, you'll lose some weight, which is nice. So, yeah. And so that power only lasted about three days. I had a cough, though, that persisted just forever. I felt like I was coughing all the time. And I never really get sick with a cough. That's just like whenever I do get sick, it's usually kind of nausea, but it's not lung related, cough related. So this was weird. Cause I was just popping cough drops all day. Coughing. Yeah. And little by little, you know, we got better. About that two week mark, we saw like a really noticeable shift. At least I did. And Ashley's symptoms were a little bit. A little bit different than mine, which is. It's an interesting thing about COVID 19 is that it seems to impact people differently. Some people get almost no symptoms. Some people get, of course, these very, very severe symptoms that we, we read about and see in hospitals. And then most people have just kind of like some variety of symptoms of varying degrees of severity. And that's, that's kind of where we were.

Exactly. And you know, like I said, at first we just thought it was kind of a cold and you were just worn down, you know, and it was because, you know, moving is hard and you're doing heavy lifting. You're not really sleeping. You're not necessarily eating well either because you're kind of in transit. But, you know, so that's kind of what we thought it was. And we. When I started not feeling well, which was about day three, I think, and so we were still sleeping in the same bed because we did not know it was Covid it just. And a lot of people are like, how could you not know? But you just don't know. Like Dave said, the symptoms are kind of not. They kind of intensify the longer you have it. So on the third day of Dave not feeling well, I started having sinus pressure and just not feeling right, you know, And I get sinus infections all the time. Like, Dave's healthy as a horse most of the time. I. I deal with seasonal allergies pretty much all the time. And my sinuses are exceptionally small according to my ent and so I get sinus infections quite often. And so I thought, okay, it's just time for my sinus infections.

I think your head is the perfect size. Even though at the orthodontist and doctors, they have to use the child devices on her. So they're like, you don't qualify for the child devices. And I'm the opposite. You've maybe never noticed just the scalable differences in the size of our heads, but my head is abnormally large. I'm here, put this together. Look. It's like two. I have two of your heads.

If you're watching on YouTube, you can see.

Yeah. If you're watching this, if you're only listening, you need to go over here.

You're missing out.

You're Missing out. See how enormous my head is in proportion to Ashley's? So sorry to interrupt you. I just wanted to point out that, you know, God gave us. Somehow. You're smarter. I don't know how you fit so many brains in such a beautiful, petite head, but I have this massive head that apparently doesn't have as big a brain. I'm, like, way off topic right now.

Well, I do want to say just on the topic of your big head. One time, our local YMCA was giving out free helmets, and I was so excited because we had a bunch of kids who needed helmets. Bicycle helmets, Right? And I got a helmet. All the kids got a helmet.

You got a child's helmet.

And then I did. I got a child's helmet. They had adult helmets, though. You guys. They had adult helmets. Well, then they go to Fit Dave, and they tried every size they had, and they were like, sir, I'm so sorry, but your head's just too big. You're gonna have to get a special size.

Yeah. So I was like, the freak. They were like, oh, my gosh, he's not even tall. What's wrong with this guy?

That is neither here nor there. So back to coronavirus. I thought I had a sinus infection. When I started feeling ill, though, we were like, you know what? We need to go get tested. Just in case. We didn't think we had it. We went to a local kind of urgent treatment center, and we were in there. And I am not exaggerating you all. They had us in there for about two minutes. They acted like everyone barely touched us. They, like. I think he took the stethoscope and listened to our lungs. And then he kind of looked in my nose to see, like, my swollen, you know, sinuses and passageways. And anyway, they were like, well, we don't know, but we're gonna give you an antibiotic, and we're gonna give you these cough pearls. You know, they're little pearls used for coughing that you get at the pharmacy and just get some rest, and that was it. And it was very quick. And they were like, we will call you with your results. And so we just went home with that and started taking the medicine, even though I was like, well, if it is Covid, I mean, an antibiotic's not gonna help at all, right?

It's not. There's. There's not any cure for it in that way. There's not an antibiotic. But in case it was something else they gave.

They just wanted to cover their bases, and so we started doing that. But then I started coming down with the chills. I started having the night sweatshirt. And then we kept kind of a low grave fever for a few days there. And I was like, you know, this feels different than, you know, your typical sinus infection. And even before we had the results, before we both received the results, which take a little bit of time, we did not have the rapid test. We had the one where they swab your throat like a strep test. And we lost our sense of taste and smell. And we knew it. We knew for sure. And so we immediately quarantined everybody, made sure that, you know, we were keeping them home from school. We quarantined ourselves. We had been quarantining anyway. Like, we weren't. Except for that doctor visit, we weren't going anywhere. We were in our bedroom and we even told our kids, we're like, don't hug us. Which is just terrible. We're very affectionate people. And our five year old especially, it was hard on him, but we didn't want to spread it. And so we ended up quarantining and following all the instructions, especially once we found out we officially had Covid and. And, you know, we just kind of buckled down at home and we had, you know, several friends who were wanting to bring food and such, and we just did not want to expose anybody to it. So we just tried to order things and not have anyone come into our home. And once we were kind of given the clear, we. I mean, I think I cleaned that place. I mean, I'm a clean freak anyway, but I cleaned that place like three times over with bleach and lysol and everything I could think of. And thank God we have been really healthy. And it also didn't hit our kids as hard as it hit us. Several of our kids did have a low grade temp while we were quarantining, but they only had about one day of symptoms and then they were fine.

Yeah, it didn't hit them nearly as hard. I did feel terrible though, because one of our friends had a. One of. One of our sons had a friend sleeping over the day that you felt.

Bad the first day.

Right. Or visiting. He was hanging out, like, the first day that I really started feeling sick. And once I started feeling sick, I was like, hey, buddy, you know we're gonna have to get you home. I can't drive you because I'm afraid that I might be sick and catch it, you know, and tried to stay away, but, you know, he ended up getting home and then he Ended up getting Covid, you know, obviously from us. And so then his family had to quarantine. His mom's a healthcare worker.

I felt so bad she didn't get it.

Thank God she did not get it. You know, but he had to like quarantine in his room by himself. And you know, our whole family was kind of quarantining together. And then they had to call the whole school and tell everybody, you know, some. Somebody had been exposed. And so I felt terrible. But it's, it's, it's very contagious. You know, that's, that's one thing that we learned is very. Because I wasn't even really close to, you know, Connor's friend. But just being in the same house, being all kind of in semi close proximity was enough for him to him to pick it up. So it is important to be careful, just, you know, be cautious. I don't think we all need to be like fearful, but I think it is prudent to just kind of be cautious right now in terms of keeping distance and wearing a mask when we can. Like right now, the only good thing that's come out of having Covid is it seems highly unlikely, highly unlikely that you can catch it twice because of the antibodies in your system. And so we now don't have nearly as much fear because we can't give it. We know we don't have it. We know that we've already come through it and we can't catch it right now except in just very, very rare scenarios. So we're still being cautious, we're still like following the guidelines, but we don't really kind of have, kind of have the fear. I will say that one thing that hit me hard during those two weeks that I wasn't really prepared for is I experienced a lot of anxiety, which normally I don't like. I'm not really an anxious person typically. But for those two weeks, I felt fearful, I felt anxious. And I'm still not sure how much of that was like an actual response to what my body was feeling. Because my whole body, mind and soul felt under attack in different ways over that two weeks. And so it was a very unique time and I was just processing it. But I do think that some of that fear and anxiety was because of what I was feeding my mind. Like I was reading every doomsday article. I was, you know, looking at every story of kind of the random outlier of the young, healthy person who ends up dying from it. And I'm thinking that could be me. That could be me. And it was just a reminder to me that we've got to guard our mind. We need to be wise. We need to understand what's going on. We need to have all the facts. But when we just feed our minds with fear, then we're going to respond with fear. But when we're reminding ourselves of God's truth and his promises, and the moment that I would make that shift and I would start praying, or I would start reading God's word and reminding myself of the promises and reading the verses about his strength and his healing and his presence, and I would cling onto those instead of everything that the news is saying. It's like I could feel in my body and my mind and my soul some of that peace and that calming coming back over. And it just reminded me that we live in a tension, that there's a. There's a battlefield going on in our hearts and our minds, not just with COVID but with really every part of life. And we've got to constantly renew our minds with the truth of God's word. That doesn't mean we put our heads in the sand and pretend like the world's problems don't exist. I think as Christians, we need to be on the front line of every important battle, but we have to do it without fear and without anxiety. We have to do it with faith, knowing that God's in control, he's with us, and our lives are in his hands, and that's the safest place they could ever be. And so I needed to be reminded of that a lot over those two weeks. Ashley was really good to encourage me and remind me that because of the two of us, like, she was way braver than me. Like, she was just. She was like, oh, yeah, we got this. We're gonna feel bad for a while, but we got this. And I was just like, I'm gonna update the will. I've got to.

You know, But I mean, it's a real. You know, I know we're kind of making light of some things, and please don't misunderstand us. We know this is very serious, and we know some people really have, you know, you know, had it way worse than us. And we know it can be very, very scary.

People have died.

People have died at all, making or have been hospitalized.

And I was afraid that we would be among those people. Right.

And so, like, what I want to say is, like, it's a legit fear. I mean, it is, because that is a possibility. But I remember specifically once we had come out of quarantine. We had been given the clear. Dave and I had been wanting to do a little couples getaway for a while. And so we both thought, you know, this is the perfect time. We were able to get an overnight babysitter. We were like, we need to get away just for a few days and just kind of breathe and reconnect. And so we did. But on that trip, we drove. We drove maybe a few hours to get to all the little airbnbs, you know, we went to in the mountains. And Dave, I noticed when he was driving, he would take this weird. He would do this weird gasping of breath, and, like, all of a sudden, he'd just be driving, and he'd be like, full breath.

I felt like there was just pressure in my chest, and then it was, you know, like I couldn't feel my lungs is how it felt, right? And I think it was a combination of anxiety, the manifestation of anxiety, and then there still being just some kind of residual. Even though we were in the clear and healed, there was still just some kind of residual junk in my lungs that I was still dealing with. And, yeah, you had to just say, just breathe.

Well, I would say. And I just. The reason I want to talk about this is maybe to the spouse. Even if it's not the coronavirus, I think this will be a good reminder for you. Like, I would. I would see Dave doing that, and I would have compassion. You know, as one who's experienced anxiety attacks, like, I know what that feels like when you can't get a deep breath and your chest becomes really tight and your body becomes really tight, and it just feels like, oh, gosh, am I having a heart attack? Am I. Am I not able to breathe? And in this particular instance, you know, after having Covid, Dave's thinking, is it coming back? You know, am I getting. Am I getting it again? And it's going to just hit me worse, and I'm going to end up on a respirator. I mean, I think that was what was going through your mind. And so, you know, seeing him do that, I was like, sweetie, listen, I think this is anxiety. You know, taking a deep breath doesn't involve raising your shoulders. And I've learned that, like, I know the coping mechanisms of an anxiety attack. And so he would listen and he would try to take a deep breath. But over time, during that time away, I would get a little frustrated. And I'm sure you sensed that. And I mean, and then I'd be like.

And you're like, I kind of at.

One point, I got a little snippy, and I was like, sweetie, listen, I think this is anxiety, but you also never get sick. And this is what's called a residual cough from heaven. Crash.

This is what human beings.

This is what human beings go through.

When you're sick, you just feel a little weird for a while, and that's just being human. And you haven't had to deal with it as much. So just get over it. I know.

Even his own mother, like, we were talking to his mom, and she's like, yeah, you know, David, he just doesn't get sick that much. And I just don't think he's experienced the residual cough. And so we were kind of laughing and trying to make light of it to help him feel better, Right? But, you know, I had to remind myself, though, I really felt the Holy Spirit convicting me, saying, like, ashley, listen, you can't rush him, you know, getting through this anxiety. You can't judge him, feeling the way that he feels. You gotta pray for him. And so I was praying for you. I mean, I was really praying for you on our drive at night. And we always, you know, pray together at night too. But I really had to check myself and realize that, you know, I can't. Just because I'm not as anxious as Dave and I went through the same thing doesn't really mean anything. And I can't hold that against him. That this has hit him a little bit harder when it comes to the fear. You know, I need to be his helpmate. I need to have compassion. And so whatever your spouse is going through, you know, even if, like, you both get something else, maybe you both get strep, you both are maybe going through just a discouraging season, maybe you've experienced financial crisis because of COVID and. And you feel like you're really fine with it and being victorious and triumphant and your spouse is just over there having a hard time. We can't point fingers. We have to be each other's encouragers. It's okay to level with them and say, like, listen, you're not seeing the truth here. And I try to do that with you. Like, Satan's really having a heyday with you with this fear of COVID coming back and you ended up on a respirator. I definitely spoke truth to him, but more than anything, I had to lead with compassion and encouragement. And like, we talk about all the time on the podcast, no matter what we're going through, whatever, you know, whatever your spouse is going through, it's affecting both of you. And instead of being frustrated, we really need to allow God to soften our heart and lead with compassion. Hey, welcome into Walgreens.

Hi there. Hey.

All right, hon. I'll grab the gift wrap cards and, oh, those stuffed animals the girls want.

Great. And I'll grab the string lights and some. How about I grab some cough drops? This is not just a quick trip to Walgreens.

I'm fine, honey.

Well, just in case. You know what they say, Tis the season.

This is help staying healthy through the holidays.

Walgreens. That's good stuff. The whole in sickness and in health vow kind of took on a new meaning as we were.

When you're both.

When you're both sick. Right. You know, you typically think about that as one spouse kind of being the compassionate helper and healer and caregiver and the other one being sick. And then they get through that. But being sick together at the same time was something we'd never experienced.

No.

And so it was unique. I mean, it was kind of a unique season. We've actually written some of the unique things about it in a book we're working on called Naked and Healthy. That's gonna be coming out fairly soon. That's kind of a follow up to the Naked marriage book. And we're really excited about the message of it. About just being healthy mentally, physically, spiritually, helping each other in that as individuals, but then also letting that make your marriage healthier and stronger as a result. And we were able to share some of the COVID stories in there, and I'm excited. I hope the message resonates with people.

Me too. And we always get this question, so I want to go ahead and address it online. A lot of people were curious about this. They were like, well, with you both being sick, what did you do? Did you bring in, like, a nurse to help you guys or like a nanny or family? And you guys. We didn't want to. First of all, we live far, far away from our families, and we didn't want to expose anyone. I mean, we had friends reach out to help. We were on lockdown. And thank God we have kind of a span in ages because our older boys did some heavy lifting with just basic little things to get, you know, get a little drink for your five year old brother or, uh, you know, with the food. I tried to not really touch the food or be close to it or breathe on it. And so they really, they really helped during that time because we were barely. I mean, for a solid week especially, we could barely get out of bed. I mean, to the point where my legs. I had a lot of leg pain, and I don't know if you did. I don't know if we've even talked about that, but my legs were really achy and hurting, and I just. Even when I would stand, I would feel like I was going to lose my footing and maybe pass out. In fact, I want to say this. I mean, the scariest moment for me, and this was probably day three for you. Dave felt so weak that he was leaning on our kitchen counter. And I think it was because you wanted the kitchen counter to make you feel colder, like you were feeling hot. And then he went to try to go to our bedroom, and he literally passed out in our. In our family room, and. And our kids were all there. I was there. This is before I actually felt sick. And I was like, okay, this is something. This is.

Well, it wasn't like I just fell flat on the ground, but I was.

You lost your footing.

I was just kind of, like, trying to stumble to the bed because I was so. It was like the peak of weakness. Yeah. And I just kind of have this coughing spell, which had made me feel really dizzy and kind of lightheaded. And I just thought, I just need to get in bed. And I just kind of, like, leaned on the wall trying to get to the bed. And before I could get to the bedroom, I was just like, I've just got to lay down. And I just ended up laying down right on the floor of the living room. Her kids are, like, watching cartoons, just looking at me like, dad, like, what's. And I'm like, I'm fine. I just need to lay here for a minute. And then I. I just. I. I kind of went to sleep there, I guess. I mean. Yeah, it was.

It wasn't.

It was weird. And I was like, I'm fine. I'm fine. So that was. Yeah, that was a low point in. Metaphorically and physically a low point.

Yes. Yes.

But thankfully, there were a lot of. Even in the two weeks that we were sick, there were a lot of moments that. That we did kind of have energy bursts to be able to just do normal things. And sometimes, like, in our house, it would come different at different times. So, like, Ashley would be feeling extra exhausted, but I'd have the energy to get up and help the kids, or I'd be feeling extra exhausted. She'd have the energy to help the kids. And so we. We did try to just take turns being strong for each other when we could. And we Were thankful to have. Have, you know, the older boys to lean on as well. But we just, you know, there's more we could share. There's so much about this out there already. But we. We just wanted you guys to hear from us what our experience was. We're not medical experts. I don't know what the solutions are. People were telling me a bunch of stuff to do while I was sick. I was taking vitamins. I was taking zinc, which supposedly is supposed to help. A lot of vitamin C to help with your immune system. I did all that stuff. I don't know to what extent it helped.

Took Theraflu, not Tamiflu, Theraflu, like the over the counter, right.

To help with the pain that has acetaminophen in it. So. So basically Tylenol, you know, just to help with the body aches, which were really bad for about a week. But the bottom line is we got through it, and we're so thankful that the Lord carried us through it. And we just, you know, want to encourage you to be safe out there, to be compassionate toward those who maybe have different levels of comfort or fear or whatever it might be related to how they should interact. Sadly, this whole issue has kind of become this just political issue where we just. As soon as you bring up COVID 19, people bring their fists up like it's going to be a political fight based on what you think. We don't want that at all. We're not trying to convince you to have a certain view around it as it relates to your politics. We're just saying, number one, be careful yourself, to try to not spread it or catch it. Number two, be compassionate to those who have it, especially those who have it in a critical way. You know, there have been those, of course, who've lost their lives, and our hearts and prayers are with families that are. That are dealing with that tragedy. And just be compassionate for people who have, like, a different mindset of it than you do based on the information they have. I know that my views changed quite a bit between before having it and actually living through it and having it. And sometimes it's not that our views are wrong, it's just that we don't have all the information. I still don't have all the information, and I still don't have all the answers. But I do know that it's a real thing. It can make you real sick. And we need to be careful and cautious and compassionate. But we also don't need to live in fear. We've tried to live our lives as normally as we can after having it while using common sense practices to stay safe. And we just wanted to share that with you just because a lot of you have asked. This is a bonus episode. It doesn't kind of really fit naturally into the Naked Marriage podcast universe in terms of very specific marriage advice, but this is more just Dave and Ashley sharing our hearts and some of our story with you because we care about you guys and I know a lot of you guys care about us. A lot of you have asked, a lot of you have prayed for us when we were sick. And we just wanted to thank you, just say thank you for your encouragement, for your prayers, for reaching out and asking, you know, for wanting, wanting to hear about, about what our experience is. And so we just, we thought we would share. And I hope that this has in some way been helpful or meaningful to you.

That's right. And we hope and pray all of you stay healthy and we will see you next time on the Naked Marriage podcast.