We had a similar experience in late December/early January with my college-aged daughter. We traveled to our vacation home in Montana in mid-December and within hours of our arrival, she became very ill (nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, slight fever, loss of sense of smell and taste). It hit her like a hammer. At first we thought she'd experienced food poisoning from something she ate on the road trip, but she had the fever which likely indicated something else. She was very sick like that for almost two weeks, surviving on Gatorade over ice the first few days (because she could not keep anything else down) and then chicken broth and dry toast the rest of the time until she started feeling better after a couple weeks.
She lost 13 lbs in the first four days and I took her to an urgent clinic the fifth. They tested blood and major organs and concluded she had a very bad virus that the doc said many had been experiencing in the area. I thought that odd since she became ill immediately upon our arrival and the last stop we had made on our trip was two and a half hours before arriving to the area. The doc prescribed anti-nausea medication which helped to substantially reduce the vomiting, although she still had no appetite for over a week after that.
Neither my husband nor I became ill, although we did experience frequent headaches at the time, which I attributed to stress over my daughter's condition. In addition to the frequent doses of Excedrin we were both taking, I did insist that we take a gram of Vitamin C each day to help our bodies fend off getting whatever infection she had. And, I was heavily disinfecting bathrooms, the kitchen, doorknobs, and light switches while my daughter was sick.
My daughter finally started feeling better on New Year's Eve and we traveled back home to Washington the next day. Although she still felt a little fragile after having been so sick, she returned to the university here in Seattle on January 6.
The end of that first week back at school, she started experiencing extreme fatigue, inability to concentrate - she described it as sometimes feeling "delirious," and what she described as "an elephant sitting on my chest" whenever she exerted herself (walking to/from classes from her nearby apt - a 15-20 minute walk). She had no cough and no sore throat. When my daughter reported her symptoms to me, I was concerned about pneumonia as a secondary infection after her having been sick in December. I picked her up and took her to an urgent care clinic again to check for pneumonia. They checked vitals (no fever, her oxygen level was fine), took blood for tests, did a finger prick blood test for anemia, and listened to her breathe, front and back, but did not do x-rays. Oddly, the nurse practitioner concluded that she may have suffered muscle tension by her study position upon returning to school and recommended that she do yoga exercises and continue to monitor her symptoms and to return for a chest x-ray if her symptoms did not improve. Over the next couple of weeks, she did the exercises and began to feel better and is fine now.
While at school, my daughter lives in a small studio apartment nearby campus that is almost exclusively occupied by international students from China, most of whom returned from winter break wearing masks whenever outside.
We also eagerly await the antibody test.
