Former Lamar superintendent's widow provides update after five weeks in quarantine

The ordeal of Joanna Wilson, the widow of former Lamar R-1 Superintendent Dennis Wilson, who died from COVID-19 March 21 continues.

Mrs. Wilson was forced to wait two weeks after her husband's death to be tested for the coronavirus, though she was displaying symptoms.

She has not had to be hospitalized and on Tuesday night shared her story on her Facebook page:

It was a month ago today, March 21, that I went from being married to being a widow. 

It happened so fast! It seems like yesterday! And I feel like a square peg trying to fit in a round hole! 

A lot had happened in that short month and yet nothing has happened. 

A lot of the past month still feels surreal. And yet I feel like I’ve been hit by a ton of bricks! I am in my fifth week of quarantine since his death, not counting the week he was in the hospital. 

No one has been in, not my kids, or any other friends or family, and so a lot of things that would normally be done in the first week have not even been started. There has been no funeral, no closure. There have been hundreds of calls, cards, messages of encouragement, for which I am immensely grateful, but no human contact. 

You see, shortly after Dennis’ death, in the two weeks of subsequent quarantine, I discovered I had some of the symptoms he had. 

I posted about that, and was connected to a sweet, caring young internist at KUMC who thought it very important that I be tested, after I was refused testing by our county health department on three different occasions. 

I tested positive, not surprisingly, and over the next two weeks of quarantine, developed more of the symptoms, adding up to all the ones Dennis had except the acute shortness of breath. And because symptoms continued I was tested at the end of that two weeks and again the results were positive. 

So back into quarantine for week number 5. 

And at the end of this week I will return to the KUMC drive-thru testing site for the third time. In meditating on that, I think that it might be safe to say some of us don’t get well in two weeks of quarantine. How many I don’t know, but it’s been a good three weeks since I noticed symptoms. 

Are people being released too soon and not realizing that they may still be capable of transmitting the virus? 

Good question! Not sure of the answer because first of all, who gets tested three times? Few to none. For sure, not enough to answer that question.