TACOMA, Wash. — “Started off with a really bad, bad cough. Very bad cough. That only lasted 4-5 days and then it was just mainly, totally lethargic,” explained Serona Schey.
Serona and her husband, Bill, are still on the mend after they both contracted COVID-19. They're both in their 70s so they're considered high risk. While the experience was pretty miserable, Serona does consider herself lucky.
“I have asthma, diabetes and heart disease so I figured if I was going to get COVID-19, I’d probably be in the hospital,” Serona added.
Neither she nor her husband required hospitalization.
But with the picture perfect days of summer finally here and cases surging across the state, they're sharing their story of how they got the virus as a cautionary tale.
“We were having a luncheon for a birthday girl. Just thoroughly enjoyed ourselves,” Serona said.
It seemed harmless enough. No one appeared sick. For four hours, the group of four friends including Serona, all in their 50s to 70s, visited with each other inside Serona's home. The next day, one of the women got sick. And then everyone else at the birthday lunch got sick, too, along with two of their husbands.
“I had a nasty cough for 10 days. The major things, I had - strength wasn’t too bad. It was for 2-3 days but it was a really bad wheezing,” recounted Bill.
The Scheys think the first woman may have caught the virus on a plane since she'd just recently traveled. But they don't know for sure.
Small clusters like theirs are contributing to a spike in Pierce County where the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department just announced another record setting day of 121 new cases on Saturday.
Out of their group, no one needed to be hospitalized.Even though it's been almost a month, the Scheys are still not out of the woods yet. But Serona does not regret hosting the birthday lunch. Neither she nor Bill want want people to live in fear. They just want people to make informed decisions about the risks of gathering.
“My thing is I think you’ve got to go out and live your lives. The older people be careful,” Bill said. “We’re not through with this yet… We don’t quite know what the long term fallout will be. And no one really does.”
Cox Media Group
