‘It was just unbearable’: Horry couple recounts coronavirus fight, life in quarantine
Editors note: The photographs and video interviews were conducted from at least a dozen feet away in the open air. Both the reporter and photographer were wearing protective gear.
“I really felt like someone had just tied me to the back of a vehicle and drug me down the road,” Jeffery Gore recounted, letting off a short dry-cough every several minutes.
“I never have experienced the body aches like that.”
On April 3, Jeffery Gore went to bed at his Conway area home not feeling the best, but also not too worried. He had that malaise we all know, that one where the back of your throat is scratchy and you know something is coming.
The next morning, it was something much worse. The aches crippled him. Gore’s fever wasn’t too high, peaking around 100.8, but he also had a cough that took two weeks to shake.
Jeffery and his wife, Vicky, were two of the now 150 coronavirus patients in Horry County. For Jeffery, his symptoms were mild and didn’t require a hospitalization. But, they are sharing their experience with the contagious virus and implore people to take the threat seriously.
They have been quarantined at their Conway area home for two weeks and have not seen their kids or family in that stretch. The couple hasn’t left home, except to occasionally sit in their backyard.
That will change next week, though, when they are cleared to resume work and normal activities. Still, some trepidation lingers.
“The CDC says three days without fever and 14 days from your first symptom and you should be clear,” Jeffery said. “I’m going to be so nervous to be around anybody.”
Testing positive
Jeffery, 43, serves as a firefighter/paramedic with the Georgetown Fire Department and part time as a volunteer with Horry County Fire Rescue. Vicky, 38, works for Veterans Affairs in Horry County.
The couple has two children, 19 and 15 years old, and enjoy going to the movies or a night out with the kids. They also enjoyed spending time at the gym.
Both knew of coronavirus before officials confirmed the first confirmed case in Horry County. Jeffery spent weeks wearing protective gear while responding to medical calls; Vicky’s work closed in early March as a precautionary step before coronavirus started to impact the country and well before she or Jeffery were diagnosed.
Jeffery left his shift on April 2 feeling fine. He spent the next day, a Friday, tearing down a barn on his property that he shares with his parents. It was that evening he started to feel under the weather.
When he awoke on Saturday, that is when the aches, fever and cough hit. Jeffery took multiple baths just to get where he could lounge around the house and relax. He said he didn’t sleep for days after falling ill.
“It was just unbearable,” Jeffery said.
On Sunday, he spoke to an MUSC doctor over the internet and could tell they wanted him and his wife to get tested for COVID-19. The two self-quarantined and were lucky their kids were not home when Jeffery started to show symptoms.
They only left the house on April 7, a Tuesday, to drive to Florence so Jeffery could get tested. Vicky’s appointment for her test wasn’t until the following day.
He arrived at the site, guarded by armed security guards, and drove to one tent where Jeffery had to show his ID through the window. There were strict instructions not to roll the window down until instructed. Jeffery also told the nurses he was a first responder, which he thinks resulted in his quick testing turnaround.
Nurses waved him into another tent where a person put the testing kit under the wiper blades. He went to a third tent, where the medical personnel swabbed deep in each nostril.
“That was awful,” he said. “It was worse than the flu because they really go back there in each nostril for a count of four. These nurses were very prepared and nice and diligent, and they counted to four.”
On Thursday, Jeffery’s doctor told him he was positive for COVID-19.
“It hit hard and it was very nervous and anxiety-riddled and I knew I was stuck at home for 14 days,” Jeffery said during a recent phone call with The Sun News. “When he said you’re positive, then you think the worst. Like I was sick, now I don’t feel sick, is the worst about to come?”
Vicky had to put on a tough face to support her husband when the diagnosis came.
“I already thought he was [positive],” Vicky said. “I’ve never seen him that sick since we’ve been together. So I was really concerned about him. But, I couldn’t let him see me be worried about him, I had to be strong because that would have made him feel worse.”
Vicky hadn’t shown any symptoms up to that point, but doctors still wanted her to get tested because she had close contact with her family. She also tested positive, putting her in quarantine for two weeks as well.
“I feel fine, I felt fine the whole time,” she said.
The quarantine, the aches, the pains hasn’t completely deprived the two of humor. Given Jeffery’s job and the fact he was the one with symptoms, they joke that he is the one likely to blame for both of them being cooped up at home.
“Yeah,” they say in unison, both laughing. That is when Jeffery let out a slight cough and added, “yeah, 100 percent.”
Life in quarantine
When they were diagnosed, both the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control and the Centers for Disease Control reached out to learn about their interactions with others.
“It was a lot of questions of who I had been around and where I went and how sick was I,” Jeffery said.
The questionnaires are now a daily activity for the couple, who spend every morning answering questions about their health. As they approach the two-week mark, Jeffery only has a slight cough remaining. Vicky has been asymptomatic the entire 14 days.
The teenage kids were not home when Jeffery started to show symptoms. The youngest was with his grandma next door and the oldest was with his girlfriend’s family, who have graciously temporarily adopted him.
“When this happened he was stuck, so they’ve pretty much taken care of him,” Jeffery said. “We haven’t seen our kids in two weeks.”
Friends and coworkers dropped off groceries, rang the doorbell and left to avoid exposure. In the last couple of days, Jeffery’s mom has left Sonic’s Route 44 Cherry limeades drinks on the doorstep.
“Just sat them on the porch and walks home,” Jeffery said.
The two have also turned to Netflix — like so many of us — to fill the time at home. They DVR their nightly shows and watch them the next day to avoid commercials.
“One of our favorite shows is Grey’s Anatomy, so we started to binge watch that,” Jeffery said. “The first day, season 1 and we’re on season 8 now. There are about 20, 22 episodes on average.
“So we’ve watched about 160 episodes so far.”
Jeffery also has breathing exercises to help his lungs, which he says had to be damaged from the disease. There were days when it was frustrating and he couldn’t hold his breath for long.
“It’s nerve-racking,” he said about dealing with the symptoms. “But, I’m very blessed that’s it. That’s all I got.”
There is also the wondering about how he caught the virus. Did it come from another firefighter? Did he give it to another firefighter? Nobody has called to say a patient he treated through work has tested positive, did it come from there? Was it from the grocery store? He just doesn’t know.
“It’s very nerve-racking because I don’t know where I got it, and if I’m the cause, that makes me feel terrible.”
A message for Horry County
Vicky said the most frustrating part of their ordeal is seeing the carefree attitude by some and how they aren’t respecting the threat.
“It’s not affecting them. They feel like, ‘Oh well, I’m fine,’ and they are going to the beaches and going out on the water,” she said. “It’s very frustrating because until people take it seriously, I don’t feel we’re going to recover.”
People can do yard work or the chores around the house they really don’t want to do, Vicky said, to help fill the time. She also suggested spending time with family making memories.
Jeffery said people need to use online grocery shopping and fighting the urge to go inside a restaurant when the line is too long. It’s not only protection for the person, but everybody else in their life.
“Try to do anything you can to limit touching other people or breathing in other people’s space,” Jeffery said.
If someone feels sick or something feels wrong, they should get tested, Jeffery said. He repeated a phrase he often uses at work — you know your body better than anyone else.
If someone has symptoms they never had before, go get tested, he said.
The couple will make some lifestyle changes once they are out of quarantine, including Jeffery will not bring his work uniform home anymore and will shower at the fire station.
That will start next week when they end their quarantine and Jeffery returns to work as a paramedic. He’s a little gun-shy about returning because he worries he could still give the disease to someone else.
Jeffery is still worried to see his kids again because he doesn’t want them to experience coronavirus symptoms.
He knows fellow firefighters are not going to say how they feel about him being around, but he wants them to. It was then that humor returned — and so did another cough — as Jeffery talked about that first day back.
“I’m sure they’ll follow me around with a Lysol bottle or whatever.”
This story was originally published April 17, 2020 at 11:29 AM with the headline "‘It was just unbearable’: Horry couple recounts coronavirus fight, life in quarantine."
