How Daddy Defeated COVID19

My dad is a strong man. He works hard and is fiercely independent. When I was a baby I was sick all the time. I would spike a fever and my daddy would rub me down with green alcohal. Then he would hook up the vaporizer and rock me to sleep in a wooden rocking chair. He would have me wrapped up in a blanket and he would have on his white night robe. M.A.S.H would be tv. He'd rock me in front of the vaporizer for hours until I fell asleep. 33 years later and now we have COVID19 at our doorstep.

What makes COVID19 so sad is you can't nurse your loved ones back to health. If your loved ones come down with COVID19 you can't touch them. You can't stay with them. You can't see them in the hospital. They are on their own and they have to fight on their own. Then if they die you can't have a traditional funeral.

My 60-year-old father has a laundry list of health problems. He has problems with his thyroid, his pancreas, his liver, hypoglycemia, blood clots and high blood pressure. They say if you get COVID19 with other health problems you are at a higher risk of dying from it. For months my father has had digestive issues so bad that he can't even eat solid food. 3 weeks ago I paid him a visit and noticed how pale he looked. He was living on a full liquid diet due to digestive problems and waiting for a scope test. I contacted his doctor and told them how much weight he had lost and how pale he looked. They moved his test date up and had him come in for a COVID19 swab. They always test you for COVID19 when you are about to get a procedure done. He called me up 3 hours later. "I have COVID19. I caught it from work." My heart sank.

My first thought was. "Oh crap! He might die!" I work in a hospital as kitchen worker. COVID19 is so bad in our community that that they have shut down entire units within the hospital and repurpose them for COVID19. I also work as a traveling CNA. The nursing homes that the agency is sending me to is also full of COVID19. COVID19 positive residents are now forced to stay in their rooms and half the building is on quaratine. All you hear about on the news is that if you get COVID19 you are going to die. I didn't want my dad to die. It's too close to the holidays to lose a relative. I said a prayer and I asked everyone on Facebook to pray. Then I took a trip down memory lane and I remembered my pediatricion.

When I was a child I was sick a lot. When my brother and I got sick with any kind of a respitory illness my mother always took us to our pediatrician. Our pediatrician was this 60 plus year old Asian man with a thick accent. He was very dark complected, with black hair and wore black framed glasses. He had a very homeopathic approach to dealing with illness and prescribed medicines only as a last resort. He was the one who told my father to rub us with alcohal when we had a fever. "It opens up the pores and releases the heat." It didn't matter if we had a cold, a flu or a sinus infection he would always give us the same treatment plan. Once in a blue moon he would prescribe us bubble gum flavored anti-biotics but most of the medicines he would tell us to take were over-the-counter. "Take Robitussin DM. Robitussin DM is an expectorant. It doesn't stop you from coughing and sneezing but it makes your cough and sneezes more productive. It thins the mucus so that when you cough you cough up the infection. Robitussin prevents respitory viruses from putting you in the hospital with pneumonia. If you take medicine that stops you from coughing up the infection the infection will just sit in your lungs." Then when Mucinex came out he started prescribing Mucinex. "Take Mucinex and drink lots of water." I remembered this and a light bulb came on in my head. Mucinex.

My daddy needed an expectorant and he needed proper nutrition. I went to CVS and found Mucinex Nightshift, Ensure, juice and "Airborne" gummies. I picked them up for him and left it at his door. He took Mucinex Nightshift every 4 hours and slept for days. The first day he was diagnosed he had no symptoms. The second day he had a dry cough, low grade fever, vomiting and extreme fatigue. Every day I checked on him by phone. He would get up every so many hours to eat, drink and take his medicine. Then he would go to sleep from the Mucinex Nightshift.

A week later my father's health returned to pre-COVID19 and the health department cleared him from his quaratine. He defeated COVID19 without having to go to the hospital. I am not a doctor. I am not a nurse. I am simply a CNA who takes care of the elderly. All I am saying is if you get COVID19 take a cough expectorant to help you cough up the virus. If you can keep fluids from building up in your lungs you will breath better.