My physical problems turned out to be a big part of my overseas trip. After a hard day of touring in Egypt, for example, I had no energy once we returned to the cruise ship. My ankles, knees, and hips hurt from all of the walking that we did, and I am in pretty good shape. I felt sick for most of the trip with a low grade fever, constipation, and difficulty sleeping. Some of the illness was self-inflicted, like when I ate too many eggs for breakfast. It felt like someone had my heart in the palm of their hand and they were squeezing hard. At time, it felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest, especially when I laid down on my side. Once I had adjusted my diet, however, I recovered quickly.
My wife and I had two vaccination shots and then a booster shot on top of that, so you can imagine our surprise when we both tested positive for COVID while in Israel. She got it first and was put into quarantine for seven days. We were supposed to fly home together but when I tested positive ten days later, I had to put Tracey in a cab and let her take the flight all by herself. Now I faced a seven day quarantine and had to isolate myself in my hotel room. The way that I dealt with isolation was to give up caffeine and alcohol in the hope that I could maintain low energy. This led to constant headaches; it felt like someone was using a pick axe to break out of my brain from the inside of my head. Also, I gave up eating lunch and dinner. It wasn’t much of a sacrifice because I was never hungry anyway but I lost fifteen pounds because of my poor eating habits.After the first two days thing took a turn for the worse. Because I was so sick, and was coughing continuously, I only slept sporadically through the night. If I sat in a chair and propped myself up with pillows then I could breathe without coughing and could sleep for two or three hours at a time. Days and nights had no meaning as my only goal was to get some sleep but I was coughing so hard that I was literally spitting up blood. The only two highlights that I had during my day was getting a call from my wife and having room service deliver my breakfast. After six days my fever finally broke. I had been having night sweats and my lasting impression of my time in quarantine was my sheets drenched in sweat and mildewing because housekeeping wasn’t allowed in to service my room.
