Normally, the 405 Freeway would have been packed with bumper-to-bumper traffic late on a Friday afternoon, but there was nothing but miles and miles of empty asphalt in front of Stacey Cochrane as she made the brisk 45-minute trip earlier this month from her Playa del Rey home to Huntington Beach.
She had already notified concierge physician Dr. Matthew Abinante of her COVID-19-like symptoms — a low-grade fever, body aches and tightness in her chest — and was driving to his office for confirmation.
As Cochrane neared the clinic, she phoned Abinante again and was told to park in an alley behind his medical practice.
Soon Abinante emerged from a door clad in gloves, a mask and goggles. “Stay in the car, look straight ahead, don’t talk or cough,” he said, while inserting a cotton swab deep into Cochrane’s nostril.
Abinante placed the swab in a biohazard bag and, without a word, quickly disappeared back into the building that houses his office. Three days later, Cochrane received the diagnosis she had anticipated: she was positive for the coronavirus.
“I thought that having the results would be calming,” said Cochrane, a 40-year-old professional, in a phone interview. “Ironically, not much changed. I had already been isolating myself at home.”
It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source.
HUSBAND AWOKE WITH FEVER
Cochrane’s ordeal began on the morning of March 10, when her husband, Andy, an executive in the immersive entertainment industry, awoke with chills and a 100-degree fever. Andy quickly called off a planned business trip to New York, and Cochrane monitored his symptoms, including fever, body aches and tightness in the chest.
“He never had difficulty breathing,” Cochrane said. “But the heaviness felt like a book was resting on his chest.”
Cochrane phoned a doctor, who said her husband likely had coronavirus and asked her to track his symptoms. As Cochrane watched over her husband, she waited to also be stricken.
“I knew it was probably coming,” she said. “I was bracing myself.”
ONSET OF WIFE’S SYMPTOMS
Cochrane recalled the exact moment when the coronavirus began to take hold. She was preparing a meal in her kitchen when she suddenly began to feel feverish. Then came the chills, night sweats and aches and pains similar to her husband’s fluctuating symptoms.
“There are times that we feel fine and times that we feel as if we have been hit by a truck and can’t move,” Cochrane said.
Cochrane said since she tested positive and Andy experienced symptoms, Abinante assumes her husband also has coronavirus and doesn’t need testing.
“His theory is that if one person has it, then the other person for sure has it,” she explained. “Testing isn’t needed and should be saved for someone else because coronavirus tests are so scarce.”
As a result, Cochrane said her husband’s apparent COVID-19 infection apparently hasn’t been included in Los Angeles County’s totals of confirmed virus cases.
Neither Cochrane’s 3-year-old-son, Conor nor her 65-year-old mother-in-law, who has self-quarantined because of her recent contact with the family, have shown any symptoms of coronavirus.
Along with the usual symptoms from COVID-19, Cochrane said there have been some surprises along the way, including the inability to taste or smell. “That’s not something that I was expecting,” she said.
