The full-scale impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic may seem distant, but for Miriam Gillow-Wiles, they’re close to home.
The executive director of the Southwest Colorado Council of Governments is believed to have contracted the virus in March. She has since recovered, but it was difficult physically and psychologically.
“If this is a mild to moderate case, I couldn’t imagine what an acute case, how bad that would be,” she told The Journal.
The Southwest Colorado Council of Governments is a collaborative organization that supports governmental entities across Montezuma, Dolores, La Plata, Archuleta and San Juan counties. Gillow-Wiles also shared her story through a video interview with the Montezuma County Public Health Department, which was spread widely on local social media pages.
Gillow-Wiles’ brush with the virus derived from a meeting she attended March 10. Seventeen days later, she was notified by the San Juan Basin Public Health Department that she had been in contact with someone who had tested positive for COVID-19.
At least three of the meeting’s attendees would get sick.
About nine days after she was exposed, Gillow-Wiles had begun experiencing a scratchy throat, but she didn’t think much of it.
“It’s the spring in Southwest Colorado, it’s windy, a dry climate, I sleep with the window open,” she said. “It’s not really indicative.”
After receiving the notification, though, she realized what her symptoms might mean. Unfortunately, at that time, local testing capabilities were much reduced, and were primarily administered to first responders or more acute cases in La Plata County, where she resides.
By the time tests were more readily available, her illness had subsided.
“It was in that nice little window where there weren’t any tests to be had,” she said. Although she wasn’t able to be tested, her primary care doctor believes Gillow-Wiles had a moderate case of COVID-19, she said. The other three meeting attendees who got sick were also unable to be tested.
“It was really scary, because there’s just nothing to be done really,” Gillow-Wiles said. “Like they say, ‘treat the symptoms,’ and that’s just fever and making sure that you can still breathe, but there’s not a lot else to do.” There was a guilt component too, because she worried that she might have infected others before going into quarantine.
COVID-19 affects people differently, and Gillow-Wiles said that contributed to the stress and uncertainty. Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention list some of the more common symptoms, which include cough, difficulty breathing, fever, chills, muscle pain, sore throat and new loss of taste or smell.
Gillow-Wiles didn’t lose her sense of taste or develop a cough. Her fever wasn’t excessively high, but she was cold and exhausted all the time.
“I couldn’t do laundry, making the bed was fatiguing,” said Gillow-Wiles, who describes herself as an active person. “Simple things. It was just so flattening.”
She also felt a tightness across her chest, like a “vice” across her rib cage. The inflammation in her chest was likely the cause of two separated ribs, according to her doctor and physical therapist.
More than anything, the virus took an emotional toll, because she feared the unknown. When the illness was at its peak, Gillow-Wiles had packed a bag with pajamas, electronic chargers, and a list of daily medications, in case she needed to be hospitalized.
The fever and sickness lasted about 10 days. Her partner also became ill with a much milder case, and the couple spent about three weeks in quarantine.
After the illness peaked, it took time for her energy to return and for her body to regulate its own temperature again.
The unprecedented nature of the virus is still scary.
“I still have some anxiety, because nobody knows what it means,” Gillow-Wiles said. “What are the long-term effects of having had COVID? Are there any? What’s the immunity? We just don’t know, and so I try very hard not to dwell on the ‘what-ifs,’ because it doesn’t help you live your life.” She did take an antibody test, which came back negative, but she and her doctor are still convinced she had the virus, considering her symptoms and exposure to it – and the unreliability of antibody tests at this time.
The experience has shed some light on the difficulty of balancing health, economic well-being and her work.
“Part of my job is to try to figure out how to support our economies and make our region successful and beneficial for the folks that live here, and that’s really hard to do when you can’t open your business,” Gillow-Wiles said. “I totally get the hardship that this creates economically, as well as the physical part of it, the health part of it.”
ealvero@the-journal.com