{"id":64853,"date":"2020-05-13T18:23:24","date_gmt":"2020-05-13T18:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/southwest-colorado-council-director-shares-her-experience-with-covid-19\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T10:14:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T10:14:14","slug":"southwest-colorado-council-director-shares-her-experience-with-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/southwest-colorado-council-director-shares-her-experience-with-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Southwest Colorado Council director shares her experience with COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Miriam
Miriam Gillow-Wiles, executive director of the Southwest Colorado Council of Governments, has been sharing her experience with an assumed case of COVID-19.<\/span>Courtesy photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The full-scale impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic may seem distant, but for Miriam Gillow-Wiles, they\u2019re close to home.<\/p>\n

The executive director of the Southwest Colorado Council of Governments is believed to have contracted the virus in March. She has since recovered, but it was difficult physically and psychologically.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this is a mild to moderate case, I couldn\u2019t imagine what an acute case, how bad that would be,\u201d she told The Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Southwest Colorado Council of Governments is a collaborative organization that supports governmental entities across Montezuma, Dolores, La Plata, Archuleta and San Juan counties. Gillow-Wiles also shared her story through a video interview<\/a> with the Montezuma County Public Health Department, which was spread widely on local social media pages.<\/p>\n

Gillow-Wiles\u2019 brush with the virus derived from a meeting she attended March 10. Seventeen days later, she was notified by the San Juan Basin Public Health Department that she had been in contact with someone who had tested positive for COVID-19.<\/p>\n

At least three of the meeting\u2019s attendees would get sick.<\/p>\n

About nine days after she was exposed, Gillow-Wiles had begun experiencing a scratchy throat, but she didn\u2019t think much of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the spring in Southwest Colorado, it\u2019s windy, a dry climate, I sleep with the window open,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not really indicative.\u201d<\/p>\n

After receiving the notification, though, she realized what her symptoms might mean. Unfortunately, at that time, local testing capabilities were much reduced, and were primarily administered to first responders or more acute cases in La Plata County, where she resides.<\/p>\n

By the time tests were more readily available, her illness had subsided.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was in that nice little window where there weren\u2019t any tests to be had,\u201d she said. Although she wasn\u2019t able to be tested, her primary care doctor believes Gillow-Wiles had a moderate case of COVID-19, she said. The other three meeting attendees who got sick were also unable to be tested.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really scary, because there\u2019s just nothing to be done really,\u201d Gillow-Wiles said. \u201cLike they say, \u2018treat the symptoms,\u2019 and that\u2019s just fever and making sure that you can still breathe, but there\u2019s not a lot else to do.\u201d There was a guilt component too, because she worried that she might have infected others before going into quarantine.<\/p>\n

COVID-19 affects people differently, and Gillow-Wiles said that contributed to the stress and uncertainty. Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention <\/a>list some of the more common symptoms, which include cough, difficulty breathing, fever, chills, muscle pain, sore throat and new loss of taste or smell.<\/p>\n

Gillow-Wiles didn\u2019t lose her sense of taste or develop a cough. Her fever wasn\u2019t excessively high, but she was cold and exhausted all the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t do laundry, making the bed was fatiguing,\u201d said Gillow-Wiles, who describes herself as an active person. \u201cSimple things. It was just so flattening.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also felt a tightness across her chest, like a \u201cvice\u201d across her rib cage. The inflammation in her chest was likely the cause of two separated ribs, according to her doctor and physical therapist.<\/p>\n

More than anything, the virus took an emotional toll, because she feared the unknown. When the illness was at its peak, Gillow-Wiles had packed a bag with pajamas, electronic chargers, and a list of daily medications, in case she needed to be hospitalized.<\/p>\n

The fever and sickness lasted about 10 days. Her partner also became ill with a much milder case, and the couple spent about three weeks in quarantine.<\/p>\n

\"Miriam
Miriam Gillow-Wiles, who was quarantined for three weeks, has been working from home.<\/span>Courtesy photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

After the illness peaked, it took time for her energy to return and for her body to regulate its own temperature again.<\/p>\n

The unprecedented nature of the virus is still scary.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still have some anxiety, because nobody knows what it means,\u201d Gillow-Wiles said. \u201cWhat are the long-term effects of having had COVID? Are there any? What\u2019s the immunity? We just don\u2019t know, and so I try very hard not to dwell on the \u2018what-ifs,\u2019 because it doesn\u2019t help you live your life.\u201d She did take an antibody test, which came back negative, but she and her doctor are still convinced she had the virus, considering her symptoms and exposure to it \u2013 and the unreliability of antibody tests at this time.<\/p>\n

The experience has shed some light on the difficulty of balancing health, economic well-being and her work.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of my job is to try to figure out how to support our economies and make our region successful and beneficial for the folks that live here, and that\u2019s really hard to do when you can\u2019t open your business,\u201d Gillow-Wiles said. \u201cI totally get the hardship that this creates economically, as well as the physical part of it, the health part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

ealvero@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gillow-Wiles recalls fatigue, fear of the unknown<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,374,28,60,29,668],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-64853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-economic-development","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-public-health"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88526,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64853\/revisions\/88526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64853"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=64853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}