My Wife Caught a Cold during the Covid-19 pandemic — Here’s What We Did

Instead of panicking, we did what we usually do at the first signs of any cold — hit the reset button, retreat into an isolation room at home to hydrate, nutrient saturate, sleep, eliminate toxic waste, and strengthen our bodies’ natural immune response. Then we monitor how our bodies respond to the healing crisis to determine if we need to seek IV ozone therapy — our first option for any cold or flu that is challenging our natural immunity. If you’re not sure why we would seek IV ozone therapy for respiratory viruses including SARS CoV-2, also called covid-19, read this article on ozone therapy.

Before I review everything we did to respond to this cold beyond washing our hands and keeping our distance, here’s what we didn’t do. We didn’t rush to urgent care or a doctor’s office, or try to get a covid-19 test that wasn’t easily available, all of which would require leaving home and gathering with a lot of other sick people to sit in a waiting room or wait in a line. Hospitals in NYC under stress learned to screen people rushing to ER with mild or moderate cold symptoms, directing them to go home to nurse their cold, so that medical resources are available for those with severe symptoms who might require an ER visit and oxygen support, or life-threatening pneumonia who might require an intensive care unit and a ventilator.

People with mild or moderate cold symptoms rushing to urgent care clinics and emergency rooms reflects to us our habitual codependency on external medical treatments over our own natural immunity. It reflects our lack of faith in our own ability to heal ourselves. And also lack of self-care, and lack of the know-how that enables care of the self. Americans were ill prepared for a novel respiratory virus pandemic. At the time of the outbreak, 6-in-10 American adults already had one or more chronic illness — meaning they had compromised immunity and were at high risk.

But if SARS CoV-2 has taught us one thing, it’s that commercial medicine in its current form failed us, and our co-dependency on pharmaceutical medicines, antibiotics and vaccines left us more vulnerable. Caught with no easily-available test, no magic-bullet medicine, and no vaccine at the time of a viral outbreak that antibiotics wouldn’t help, our health care system was quickly reduced to crisis management in urgent care and ERs — which naturally scared the pants off anyone who was counting on those external treatments to save them.

So the first step in this healing crisis, like any healing crisis, is to face our fears, and take personal responsibility for our own self-care. Something we should have been doing all along. And could be doing now with natural plant-based herbal remedies, nutrition and self-care practices at home, including grandma’s vegetable stock and chicken bone broth recipes, and a strategic collection of quality supplements.

Anyway, leaving home to seek medical care for mild or moderate cold symptoms — which, according to current data, is how about 80% of people will experience this coronavirus — would only stress my wife’s immune system more, and expose more people to whatever cold virus she had, while also increasing both our risk of nosocomial infection (acquired in a clinic or hospital) from covid-19 or any number of other respiratory viruses and bacteria. So our reset started with retreating home to take care, and to give care.

Typically, care is given and received first at home in families and couples, or between close friends. And that’s good, because we don’t ever want to leave a sick person alone without a caretaker. As The Healist, I blog about taking care and preventive self-care all the time, and envision a future health care system and educational system where preventive health care is valued, taught and practiced. So I laughed out loud one night recently when I heard Donald McNeil, a science reporter, had argued in a New York Times article that people with even mild and moderate cold symptoms should be removed from their homes to prevent infecting others with covid-19. What a maladaptive idea! And confusing to the public, because his message was the opposite of shelter at home. When we panic and jam the lines to urgent care and ERs, exposing ourselves and everyone else to whatever viruses or bacteria each of us is living with in our personal biome, that’s when our pandemic becomes panicdemic, as my wife who has spent her professional life in advertising coined it. Creating panicdemic will just block us from making necessary adjustments in our thoughts, feelings and behaviors in order to adapt quickly to our public health crisis. For example, why aren’t hospitals already using IV Ozone Therapy, or even talking about IV Ozone Therapy as a treatment for covid-19.

Anyway, I couldn’t imagine my wife leaving home early in a cold cycle instead of going to bed — even if there were somewhere safe for her to go, which there isn’t. Because home is where we have our herbal teas and tinctures, vitamin and mineral supplements, superfoods, juicer, and pot of potassium-rich vegetable broth or chicken bone broth on the stove, and stash of potassium-rich coconut water in the fridge. Home is also where I am. As her first caregiver, I would play a critical role in supporting my wife’s recovery and preventing her cold from developing into severe symptoms and complications that might require a visit to a crowded doctor’s office, urgent care, or worse, a hospital bed in short supply.

If my wife did have SARS CoV-2 (I don’t think she did, but right now we can’t say for sure she didn’t), separating her from me for mild or moderate symptoms betrays the common sense wisdom of family healing at home — where most people around the world heal respiratory colds and flu. To adapt successfully to this new respiratory coronavirus crisis and prevent future ones, we need to accept the reality of healing at home and get smarter at it, rather than discount it. Women and men who run households — including household health — know they will play a crucial role in how we adapt to SARS CoV-2. This novel coronavirus has the capacity to become viral pneumonia, especially in those with compromised immunity. So what we choose to do at home to prevent that, and what we know how to do to prevent that, really matters. In fact, it has never mattered more.

Admit we are sick earlier

My wife’s cold started with fatigue, a sore throat and congested nasal passages. Those symptoms were followed one day by a couple short little fevers. I recognized those signs before my wife was psychologically ready to admit she was sick. “Are you having a fever?” I would ask, and she would say “No, I just don’t need this jacket now, it’s getting warmer,” or “my sore throat is because the air is so dry,” and things like that. I suspected fear that she might have covid-19 was causing her to go into denial. But denial only delays an early response. And with colds and flu — really with any healing crisis — the earlier we respond the better. Early response makes a huge difference.

At the same time, it’s important to say that the opposite response — hysterical overreaction to every sneeze, cough or need to clear our throat — just creates more panic, confusion and stress. Staying balanced in self-awareness is the healthy path. So whether we are the ones falling ill and needing care or we are the caretakers, we start with emotionally honest conversations about symptoms so that we can make an intelligent assessment of the reality of our situation. And we deal with any emotions head on, feeling our way to determine if someone is overreacting and imagining the worse, or if someone is dragging their feet to admit they are sick out of fear, and wasting precious time and energy pretending they’re fine when they’re not. So we listen empathetically to each other’s body stories, with the awareness that sometimes what we’re hearing is a cover story. Never believe a cover story.

I called a spade a spade and took my wife home to check her temperature, where seeing her 100.5 temperature reading on a digital thermometer helped her surrender to the fact she had caught a cold during a novel coronavirus pandemic, however much it sucked to say that. She got into bed to rest. I took over the kitchen, and we isolated my wife in the master bedroom, which is an EMF shielded room (grounded shielding paint on the walls, grounding mat, and shielding curtains on the sliders). Luckily, we have a guest room and bath that I could move to on a separate floor of our loft, where I kept my distance from her. But I checked in on her often, bringing her a regular flow of hydrating drinks. I talked to her from about 6 feet away to listen to her subjective experience of what was happening and how she was feeling, and to ask if she needed anything. This way we could monitor her situation in real time.

The couple little fevers were followed by about three full-blown fevers over 2–3 days that each ran for an hour or two and caused intense sweating. It is not our practice to take ibuprofen or acetaminophen to reduce a fever if it is a functional fever, meaning a fever that peaks before hitting 101.5 degrees, or maybe 102 degrees, and resolves on its own (versus a fever that runs at 102 or higher that doesn’t come down but seems to keep running). A fever is part of how our immune system responds to an infection, raising body temperature in an attempt to kill a virus or pathogenic bacteria that has infected us. Stopping a functional fever when it starts doesn’t help our natural immunity at all.

My wife also developed sinus drip down the back of her throat that started a little tickle that seeded a little cough. That little cough made us both very concerned, and very vigilant. Stopping respiratory viruses before they get to our lungs is critical, because what makes covid-19 so challenging to us is its propensity to turn into pneumonia in the lungs, especially in the lungs of those of us with compromised immunity, regardless of our age.

Fortunately, my wife doesn’t have compromised immunity — though I wouldn’t have said that ten years ago. But due to her own efforts, other than this cold, she is a healthy person today with good natural immunity. She does not have diabetes, or indigestion, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, asthma or history of cancer or pneumonia. She also has taken measures to reduce her risk of ill health by eliminating inflammatory foods like dairy, wheat and sugar, exercising, having her mercury amalgam dental fillings removed safely, and doing a liver/colon cleanse at least twice a year, as well as coffee enemas whenever she feels the need. She also works with an integrative doctor to balance her hormones, including thyroid hormones, with bio-identical hormone replacement therapy. She had even had a rotten wisdom tooth that was taxing her immune system that had never ruptured removed from her jaw a decade ago by an amazing systemic dentist who spotted a shadow on her digital x-ray. In addition, though she had been over-prescribed antibiotics in her youth, for acne first and sinus infections later, she has been antibiotic-free for twenty years. She also eats both prebiotics and probiotics to culture better gut health — a concern for her because her father died of stomach cancer. As a result of all her efforts, both of us had a lot more faith than fear that, given enough care — both self-care and care-taking from me — her body would be able to handle this healing crisis at home with her own natural immunity, even if it was covid-19.

It’s important to say that having more faith than fear is better for our health, because fear can be paralyzing, and we end up doing very little when lots could be done, whereas faith mobilizes us to take action because we believe we are the biggest factor in our own healing. Faith is also better for our immunity because adrenaline and cortisol weaken natural immunity, so we always want to down-regulate a fear-based adrenaline response whenever possible in a healing crisis.

Prevent nasal and sinus congestion from becoming a cough

The first challenge when we get a respiratory cold, or when we are care taking for someone who caught a cold, is to try to prevent it from turning into a chest cold. This is certainly true for SARS CoV-2. We want to prevent the virus from getting to our lungs. Viruses usually come in through the throat, nose and eyes where they meet our first line of immunity — our mucus membranes. Mouth breathers are at a disadvantage, because they breathe viruses in the air directly into their lungs. So if you live with chronic inflammation and congestion in your sinuses and nasal passages, and are a snorer, you need to get to the bottom of what’s causing that and heal it. If we swallow a virus, our first line of defense is our stomach acid. This is why when we have chronic indigestion, typically caused by lack of HCL stomach acid, we are more vulnerable to infection. So the first thing we can do to fight a cold is hydrate. Because healthy mucus membranes and healthy stomach acid both require hydration. To hydrate we need both water and the proper ratio of electrolyte minerals to get water across cell membranes. The biggest mistake Americans make is taking in too much sodium and not enough potassium, magnesium, calcium, zinc and selenium, as well as about 32 other minerals and trace elements. So we want to be careful not to eat too much sodium when we have a cold or flu, and to get enough of the other minerals. Hence the wisdom of grandma’s chicken bone broth recipe and vegetable broth recipe.

As soon as we both cognized that my wife had caught a cold, she stopped eating cooked foods and shifted to liquids so she could hydrate faster, allow her digestive system to rest, and channel more energy to her immune system to do what it needed to do — identify, locate, mark and then phagocytize whatever cold virus she had in her, and eliminate the virus from her body. As a holistic bodyworker, I understand in the language of our embodiment that “eliminate” means sweat it out, piss it out, shit it out, spit it out, snot it out, cry it out and hack it up. Sometimes even vomit it up. But get it out one way or another.

So the first thing we did to support my wife through her healing crisis was create a river of life to hydrate her and flush out waste. From the kitchen came a consistent flow of potassium-rich vegetable broth, superfood shakes providing a full spectrum of minerals, vitamins and phytonutrients with apple juice and chia seeds for good essential fats, celery juice, coconut water, kombucha, spicy lemonade with cayenne and maple syrup, and herbal teas. Anyone who has done a 10-day liver/colon detox with me knows these are the same 7 daily drinks I use when I detox. That’s because a healing crisis and a detox are the same. Remember the old adage — starve a fever. When fighting a cold or flu with fevers, we avoid eating cooked foods that take a lot of energy and water to digest and eliminate, especially comfort foods and packaged foods with little nutrient value and a lot of sugar. That kind of nutrient-depleted food is horrible for us when we’re sick. If you’ve been eating that way when you fall ill, hit the reset button immediately. Stable blood sugar is better for stronger natural immunity.

My wife also took natural herbal intestinal movement supplements every night to help her bowels release their toxic acidic waste. Being constipated will not help a stuffy nose open. They’re connected. And remember, the liver filters the blood constantly and will catch some of the virus in its sticky bile, which it will purge into our colon for elimination in feces. When we are sick from a viral infection is not a good time to hold onto old crap, because our colon absorbs water from feces before it purges it, and can reabsorb the virus back into the bloodstream. So we always want an empty colon and a clean liver when we are ill. And for the same reason we want to support healthy kidney function, because the kidneys also filter our blood of pathogenic microbes to be eliminated via the bladder.

The second thing we did to keep this cold from turning into a cough was to blow hapé medicinal snuff, also called rapé, into my wife’s nasal passages and sinuses in order to keep them open and clean. I used a ceremonial pipe a shaman friend gifted me. I’m so grateful to be given this simple tool of natural plant medicine that is so immediately effective for opening clogged nasal passages and congested sinuses and flushing tear ducts. In addition, the snuff itself is anti-microbial, and so works as a protection and prevention. If you don’t have hapé, you can use a neti pot for the same effect, but use distilled water instead of tap water. My personal preference is hapé snuff over the neti pot because the medicinal snuff is dry rather than wet. If you want something to spray into your nasal passages, you can try xylitol nasal spray.

There is also a device my wife and I have called a Lung Flute, a mucus-clearing device that uses acoustic vibration to dislodge congestion from the lungs and clear airways. You just blow on this device like a flute, and the breathe causes a filament to vibrate at a frequency that breaks up mucus in the lungs so it can be expunged. My wife never had to use hers because the hapé medicinal snuff was working to keep her sinuses open and drip free, and she never developed a full blown cough. But having a Lung Flute easily at hand gave her some confidence that if she did develop a chest cold, she had resources be help her clear her own air passages. The Lung Flute, for some reason I cannot fathom, requires a prescription from a doctor in the U.S. but not outside the U.S. Another symptom of dysfunction in our health care system that provides neither IV Ozone Therapy or Lung Flutes to patients. I think in the current situation, Lung Flutes should be sold direct to consumers online. Like IV Ozone Therapy, having access to a Lung Flute in the first week of a cold can help prevent so many people from rushing to ER or urgent care when their symptoms are moderate, and also when they are the most infectious, protecting hospital staff and patients from unnecessary exposure and allowing hospitals to focus on caring for those with severe or even life-threatening symptoms.

Here’s how we used the hapé medicinal snuff. I had one long pipe to deliver the medicinal snuff to my wife’s nostrils, and one shorter bent pipe to deliver the snuff to myself to protect me from catching whatever cold she had. I did a hapé ceremony with her about every other day, starting on day one. Whenever sinus drip started to tickle a cough in the back of her throat, I blew hapé for her and the cough went away along with the sinus congestion. The first blow left my wife clearing her nostrils and sinuses for a good 20 minutes. When the hapé snuff hits the mucus membranes in the nostrils and sinuses, it coats them and causes a mucosal flush. The sinuses and nose will start to drain, the eyes will tear and weep, and the mouth will salivate. Sometimes people will have a bowel movement as the hapé causes a detox. For my wife, the intense flushing lasted for a while, and resulted in some really productive nose blowing, tearing, hacking and spitting. After which she lay down on the floor right where she was, with both nasal passages and sinuses completely open, and fell into a deep sleep. I covered her with a blanket and put a pillow under her head, and let her rest. When she woke up, she got back in bed, and a few hours later she ran her first big fever. Her description of the hapé was that it sped everything up. Suddenly she had jumped into the thick of her healing crisis with this cold virus, as if the hapé had flipped a switch on in her immune system.

Supporting natural immunity against respiratory viruses

My wife cleared the cold virus in 7 days. When she was done she had no lingering symptoms — no lingering cough or nasal congestion, and no fatigue. Her healing crisis was over. In fact, she looked great, having lost a couple pounds of fat she didn’t really need. I nursed her through her cold from start to finish, and did not catch it myself. She was able to resolve her respiratory cold without IV Ozone Therapy, though that would have been our next step before urgent care. There were times when we considered making an appointment for IV ozone therapy, but decided not to because her symptoms weren’t severe enough to merit competing for an appointment with those who were more sick. We took necessary precautions, some that everyone has been asked to do, like social distancing and washing our hands, and others that might surprise you, like medicinal snuff and coffee enemas. I was not afraid of catching the cold from her. I respected that I could, and I certainly took every precaution, but I did not feel fear about it. Had I come down with the cold virus she had, whatever it was, I would have settled into my own healing process envisioning a healthy recovery as I do with any cold, but being more rigorous than ever, and would have looked forward to a time when both of us had natural immunity to another respiratory virus.

Was my wife’s cold virus SARS CoV-2? Who knows for sure. And in the weeks since we’ve seen more and more friends in social media ask the same question. But given the first case of covid-19 in California was confirmed January 25th, we would have to say it was a possibility. She had passed through LAX twice on a trip to and from Santa Fe in mid February, before shelter-at-home orders had been given advising Americans not to travel, and she fell ill upon her return. On one flight she sat next to a man coughing. On another she sat across from a group of South Koreans wearing masks. By March 4th, a screener for incoming flights at LAX tested positive for covid-19. So LAX was definitely a vector around that time — no surprise given the traffic in and out of the airport on any given day.

The truth is, it didn’t really matter if she had SARS CoV-2 or some other kind of respiratory virus. The care-taking we practiced to help her recover in a week rather than decline into more serious pulmonary symptoms was done at home using natural remedies, smart supplements, hydration, detox and nutrient-rich superfoods and raw juices. Because I was at risk, I used them too, to help me prevent catching whatever she had. We did not use masks at home, but as I said, we did not share a bathroom or bedroom, and she stayed out of the kitchen. But I used a mask when I went out for supplies.

Here is the daily routine we both did during this cold to bolster stronger natural immunity for both of us. Because there’s a lot more that we can do when we stay home with a cold than wash our hands and keep our distance.

Vitamins:

20,000 IU Vitamin D with K

4000 mg liposomal Vitamin C

Vitamin A

B complex

Superfood mix with broad spectrum of vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients

Raw celery juice for vitamins and minerals

Minerals:

Isotonic Sea Minerals

Nano-iodine oral spray

Colloidal zinc

Colloidal selenium

Colloidal trace minerals

Magnesium/calcium in water

Potassium salts in water

Anti-microbials and anti-virals:

Chaga oral spray

Beta-glucan

Monolauren

Nasal and sinus protection:

Hapé medicinal snuff

Throat protection:

Zinc lozenges

Essential oil lozenges

Oil pulling with coconut oil

Mouth protection:

Food grade hydrogen peroxide diluted to 3% solution

Sterilize toothbrush after each use

Tongue scraper

Xylitol for swishing

Neem tooth powder

Lung protection:

N-acetyl cysteine (NAC)

Vinpocetine

Colon cleanse:

Herbal intestinal movement formula

Coffee enema

Raw Juices:

Grapefruit juice

Carrot juice

Celery juice

Soups:

Potassium-rich vegetable broth

Chicken bone broth

Essential fats:

Ground chia seeds

Cold-pressed virgin olive oil

Fish oil