‘The Coronavirus got me,’ Boulder City man reveals on Facebook
Manny Franco of Boulder City woke up last Monday feeling under the weather. He knew something was not quite right and decided he should get tested for coronavirus.
“So … the Coronavirus got me,” he posted on his Facebook page Friday night.
“I’ve been in contact with a number of people and thought it might be a possibility,” he said in a telephone interview with the Boulder City Review. “I thought it wise to get tested and not put others at risk.
“The other thing, too, that was odd, when I get sick, and I don’t get sick often, I know when. My sinuses are stingy and awful, then my voice (goes). This felt very different from any other time I’ve been sick.”
Franco, a musician and bartender at a Henderson brewery, said he learned he had tested positive late Thursday.
He said he is not feeling too bad.
“Actually, so far, it goes up and down. I will start to feel like I’m getting better, then I feel crummy again and I take a nap. I have felt way sicker in the past with just the flu.”
He said he is “relatively young (32) and relatively healthy” and has no doubt he will make a full recovery.
“I’m still cooking dinner and watching Netflix. Resting. It’s nothing too bad.”
He said the “weirdest thing” so far is that he can’t smell or taste anything even though he doesn’t have a stuffy nose.
“I’m breathing fine, which is odd.”
Franco said the clinic where he was tested told him not to leave home, “which we were already not doing. So nothing changed there. They said to try to let anybody know that I had been in contact within the past three weeks.”
He said that seemed like a longer period of time than what the stated incubation period is, which the World Health Organization has estimated to be from one to 14 days and most commonly five days.
“That’s why I posted on my Facebook page. It was the best way to let the highest number of people know.”
Franco said he doesn’t know exactly where he was exposed to the virus.
He and his wife, Riley, had taken a trip to Zion National Park in Utah to get away.
“We got back (home) and throughout the day I began to feel feverish and sore.”
He said they went to several places to get a thermometer but were unsuccessful, so he had no idea what his temperature was. “I felt feverish and clammy but didn’t have an actual number.”
That’s when he decided he should get tested.
Since learning he was sick, Franco said, his friends have been very supportive.
“I have some very kind Boulder City friends who brought by some soup the husband swears is magic and will cure anything. They left it way outside our door. … We are very appreciative.”
Hali Bernstein Saylor is editor of the Boulder City Review. She can be reached at hsaylor@bouldercityreview.com or at 702-586-9523. Follow @HalisComment on Twitter.