Interviewee: Don Ringe, Narberth, PA
Interviewed by Becky Miller, Amherst, MA
Date: August 21, 2020, Via Zoom
Topic: Experiencing Coronavirus
Becky Miller: Good! Don, if we could just start with maybe giving your full name, the year you were born and where you live. And then also, where you work and what you do for a living.
Don Ringe: Certainly I’m Don Ringe. I was born in 1954. I live in Narberth, Pennsylvania, and teach in the Linguistics Department at the University of Pennsylvania.
Becky Miller: Very good. And how long have you taught there?
Don Ringe: Since 1985. I’m very senior!
Becky Miller: Excellent. Can I have your permission to include this interview in the Hampshire College COVID-19 Oral History Archive?
Don Ringe: Yes. So far as I can see.
Becky Miller: Excellent. Thank you very much. Okay. So I understand, unfortunately, that you were quite ill with COVID-19, earlier this year. Can I ask you when you started to feel unwell?
Don Ringe: That’s complicated. Respiratory symptoms started at the beginning of the third full week in April. I think Monday the 20th was the day when I realized that, it seemed like a cold. However, for an entire week preceding that, I had extreme diarrhea. And now I wonder whether that was a Covid symptom too. It makes a little difference because although I had decided as soon as the lockdown began, that I would do the families’ shopping. … If the onset of respiratory symptoms was the beginning of the disease, then I probably contracted it sometime in the second full week of April. And it’s not real clear how. But if the disease really started a week earlier than that, then I contracted it in the week before, when there were still plenty of people walking around without masks. And that will probably be the explanation for why I got it. I just don’t know. We don’t know enough about this disease yet.
Becky Miller: Right. And that was my next question: do you have any guesses as to how or where you picked the virus up? And I think you just answered it.
Don Ringe: Well, yeah, probably, almost certainly shopping. Much less likely the cleaners coming in. Conceivably by taking packages out of the hands of post office employees and delivery people, you know? They’re impressive. They have to work in spite of the risks and I sure as hell wasn’t going to insult them by asking them to put things on the porch so that I could protect myself. But, you know, they tell us that the virus doesn’t usually spread through objects. So I probably picked it up out of the air while shopping.
Becky Miller: Hmm. Wow. Okay. So you had an onset of symptoms and different types of symptoms. And then, how did you ultimately get diagnosed?
Don Ringe: Right. The respiratory symptoms continued throughout the week. I turned out to have a fever, not an extreme one. But on the fourth day of the infection — so far as I knew, that would be Thursday — my temperature began to climb. And it kept climbing and it kept climbing on Friday and that’s a classic COVID trajectory. I called the doctor and told her so, and she said, you need to get tested. So I went in immediately and was tested. They could tell at once that it wasn’t the flu. Two days later, she called me up and told me that I had COVID-19. That would have been about Sunday, about the seventh day of the respiratory symptoms.
Becky Miller: In terms of how you felt, did you feel like this was a different type of illness, apart from a cold, or maybe, pneumonia or the flu or something. Did you feel like it was essentially a different reaction of your body?
Don Ringe: Not at that point. That came a little later. On Monday, that would be the eighth day of respiratory symptoms, I began to notice that I couldn’t smell or taste anything. Dinner should have been, uh, tasty … It tasted fairly bad on that day. And then beginning that night, I was simply prostrate. Exhausted all the time, spending most of my time lying in bed. The worst of it was, although I didn’t realize this until later, I lost my appetite. And if you have no appetite and can’t taste anything and can’t smell anything, it’s astonishing how hard it is to force food down. You know, I’d try eating a little something every day and I’d very soon give up. It just wasn’t a pleasant experience. More about that in a minute. That continued — of course, we kept taking our temperatures — that continued until the following Sunday, the 14th day of respiratory symptoms. That evening, my temperature suddenly plummeted back to normal.
Don Ringe: It’s clear that my body had kicked the virus out. Right? But I still had no appetite. And I began to realize that I hadn’t eaten much of anything for a week or more. You know, what happens when, when you do that? First, your body uses up its fat reserves and then it starts cannibalizing muscles. I started out at 180 pounds before I got the virus. I lost 30 pounds and I could feel the muscles in my thighs shrinking and becoming non-adjacent to one another. After a while I got alarmed. I guess a couple of days after the temperature plummeted, I called the doctor again and told her what the situation was. I was also having trouble sleeping. I don’t know why. She prescribed Xanax to help me sleep and urged me to get hold of protein shakes and use those, because you know, they’re easy to ingest whether you feel like it or not, to get my weight back up.
Don Ringe: Now I was already extremely happy that I have a family. Beth wasn’t as sick as I was, but she was pretty sick. Our older daughter, Emma got a case that was no worse than a bad cold. Our younger daughter, Lucy was completely symptom free, although she must have contracted the virus, you know. She is the one who took care of us and managed the household for a solid week during the course of which she turned 17. She did a fantastic job! She was very good indeed! Now I needed to go out and get protein shakes and Xanax, and I was simply too weak to do it, even, even with curbside pickup. Beth and Lucy went out and did it for me. So, once again, it’s a darn good thing that I’ve got a family. And I began to eat or rather drink protein shakes on schedule. Every four hours have a couple, whether I felt like it or not. It took me a month to gain the weight back, but I did it.
Becky Miller: Wow. That’s incredible. 30 pounds.
Don Ringe: I want to mention it and emphasize it because, you know, everybody talks about what can happen to your lungs with this. And apparently that’s pretty bad. We know someone who, a woman in her fifties, who had terrible lung pain with the virus. She did make a complete recovery. But I gather from the doctor that being unable to eat and becoming emaciated is also actually a fairly common outcome. And it seems clear that if you don’t catch it, it can be very serious. So I’d like to emphasize that because that was my experience. That was the worst thing about it. I’m sure my life wasn’t ever in any danger, but the fact is I experienced the first stages of starvation. Without the hunger! Which is weird, but that’s how it was!
Becky Miller: Yeah. Yep. Very strange, very strange. And of course, when you don’t eat, you get weaker, you feel weaker and your body’s opened up to more opportunistic diseases and infections and whatnot. So it can spiral and I’m no doctor, but I can only imagine.
Don Ringe: Sure, sure.
Becky Miller: You segued neatly to my next question, which was, how did your illness affect your family? And in fact, you started to talk about your wife, Beth. And you said that she too was ill with COVID-19?
Don Ringe: She was bedridden. For fewer days than I was. And she lost less weight than I did. It wasn’t a mild case by my standards any way, but it was a milder case. By the time I really needed to get that medicine, she was able to go out and do curbside pick up for it, which is, which is a good thing.
Don Ringe: Yeah. We all got through okay. But one of the reasons I got through okay was them.
Don Ringe: You know, it’s interesting: I’m used to the idea that I take care of my family. Right. I mean, that’s, that’s one of the things that gives purpose to your life is taking care of your family. The tables were turned for a little while and they had to take care of me. And I’m really, really grateful.
Becky Miller: Of course. Yeah. That’s sweet.
Don Ringe: There were a couple of other, consequences. During the time that I was seriously emaciated, I damaged both feet somehow. I think I stone bruised the left foot and I somehow twisted the right foot. My doctor wasn’t the least bit surprised when I told her. Apparently, emaciated people injure themselves all the time because they try to get their bodies to do things they used to do and can’t anymore. The weird thing about the right foot injury is that it replicated an injury of about three months earlier. I need to go back a little bit. At the beginning of September, I got a severe case of sciatica — shooting pains up and down my right leg. All night long for two and a half weeks.
Don Ringe: Well, the short story is we got it under control. They got me into, you know, physical therapy. By January, everything seemed fine. It had more or less gone away. And then, every once in a while, I’d get a shooting pain in my right foot. And as a result of that, I twisted it, I guess, sometime toward the end of January. Basically what COVID emaciation did was make me redo that injury, sort of reactivate it. Okay. That took a long time to go away. And in the meantime, my ankles started swelling up. I talked to the doctor about that too. She said, well, it’s because you’re emaciated: your muscles don’t have the strength to pump the lymph back up your legs. So your ankles are gonna get swollen, you know, especially in the evening. That eventually went away, more or less. But it turns out that COVID kind of reactivated the sciatica. It’s not bad, you know, I’m not in so much pain that I can’t sleep or anything like that. But it’s still there and it was more or less completely gone before I got the virus. So apparently if you’re talking about something that’s purely physical, which is what sciatica is after all — it’s a pinched nerve somewhere in your spine. Apparently, I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the weight loss and weight gain. It can reactivate something purely musculoskeletal like that.
Becky Miller: Right. Wow. That’s, that’s kinda like the one, two punch, right?
Don Ringe: Yeah. Right.
Becky Miller: Was the possibility of hospitalization ever raised?
Don Ringe: No, no. The doctor, did not, she saw no reason why I should be hospitalized. In fact, at the time that I was diagnosed, she told me my lungs were completely clear.
Becky Miller: Right. So you had very few, if any, respiratory distress or symptoms?
Don Ringe: That is correct. What I had was like an extremely severe case of the flu lasting more than a week.
Becky Miller: All told from beginning to end? Would you say, how long did it last?
Don Ringe: Respiratory symptoms lasted exactly 14 days, as far as I can tell. You can add in the week of diarrhea before that, if you like. And then, simply physical recovery took another month after the respiratory symptoms ended. And that’s apparently completely normal. People were saying, you know, even if you’ve got a mild case — which technically, mine was since my lungs weren’t involved — it’ll take you at least two weeks to recover. Yeah. Well, “at least” is what’s operative there. It took me four and I can see that it might take other people longer.
Don Ringe: I’ve never been so sick in my life.
Becky Miller: Really?
Don Ringe: Yup. This was the worst. And, you know, not that bad in the scheme of things. And I learned a lot from it, but it was extremely unpleasant.
Becky Miller: What did you learn, Don? … Thinking back, you know, retrospectively, what are some of the insights you may have gained from this experience?
Don Ringe: I think that my tolerance of risk is about right. Okay? I wasn’t scared of getting this thing before I got it. That’s why I was perfectly happy to go do the shopping for my family. I knew perfectly well that I might get it. It didn’t bother me all that much because, I can calculate the odds as well as anybody else. Right? Yes, of course, I had just turned 66. I’ve been developing Type Two diabetes for some years. So I had a couple of risk factors. But even, even people like me, don’t usually wind up hospitalized with this thing. My doctor is aware of another guy in his sixties, somewhere in Narberth, who got it before I did and, you know, recovered at home. So, like I say, I think my tolerance of risk is about right. And of course, if I wasn’t scared of it before, I’m sure as hell not going to be scared of it now. I’ve beat the damn thing once. I’m probably immune. But even if I’m not entirely immune, I’m sure I can beat it again. You know, it’s hard to criticize people for being afraid.If you’re afraid, you’re afraid. But it’s a good idea … There was an article about this in the New York Times, a few days ago, and the lady got it exactly right. It’s a good idea to think about how much risk you can tolerate. I tolerated enough risk to make me sick and teach me something and that’s okay.
Becky Miller: Do you have any insights about or reflections on your body’s own resilience?
Don Ringe: Well, it’s a lot more resilient than I thought. I have a second rate body. I was born with a club foot. I still have a slightly crooked spine. I’ve been slowly acquiring these old age disabilities since I was 50 or so. I was a little surprised at my body’s resilience. My doctor’s been telling me for some time that for my age, I’m healthy, in spite of, you know, the stuff like the elevated blood sugar levels and the fact that I’ve got to take a medicine to keep my cholesterol down. Well, I guess she’s right! I’m a little surprised! So much so. … yeah …
Becky Miller: Moving on to maybe your more immediate community, family … your community in Narberth, or maybe even beyond, to University of Pennsylvania, where you work. Do you have any, insights or revelations that struck you, regarding people’s reactions, your community’s reaction to your and your family’s encounter with COVID-19?
Don Ringe: Reaction has mostly been sensible. I mean, some people are more frightened of it. Actually, most people seem to be more frightened of it. But that’s not irrational after all. It’s not a death sentence, not even for somebody like me, the problem is the uncertainty. You don’t know how, how bad your case is going to be, you know. You certainly don’t want to pass it around. Right? No, on the whole, for a long time, all the churches were shut. It started being possible to… Go to church with elaborate social distancing, maybe a month ago. So I started going back. Fairly few people showed up, slowly more and more as the weeks went on. Everybody is being appropriately cautious as far as I can tell. The University of Pennsylvania is going to be almost completely online in the fall for all the obvious reasons.
Don Ringe: We’ve got the technology to take care of that. …I think they’re being hyper cautious about letting us back in our offices and labs. On the other hand, being cautious is their job. So, I have not seen much recklessness of the sort that’s reported from Florida. Right? On the other hand, I haven’t seen that much panic either. Yeah, you know, maybe at first, people are used to it now. So I think we’ve settled into a new — I don’t want to call it normal. We’ve settled into a new pattern that we can handle. And the community as a whole seems to be okay with that.
Becky Miller: The city of Philadelphia and your own of Narberth. Has there been any kind of civic engagement or help that’s been offered to people who’ve developed the illness or any kind of community services that you know of? That you maybe you took advantage of that were helpful to you?
Don Ringe: No, we didn’t need them and didn’t use them. I mean, there is a Narberth Food Bank. I’ve been funneling money into that for a while because obviously people who have lost their jobs need it. The mayor of Narberth has been, uh, has been extremely helpful, in informing people and asking people to be sensible and that kind of thing. She organized a Black Lives Matter protest that we attended. Sure enough, the whole thing took place in a huge field with social distancing, right? Of the appropriate kind, everybody wearing a mask, that kind of thing. So I haven’t been all that aware of community initiatives, but what little I’ve seen strikes me as appropriate and positive.
Becky Miller: Great, great. Let’s talk a little bit about the aftermath. Has there been any kind of emotional toll for you throughout this experience?
Don Ringe: No! Just like that! No. Of course, as far as I know, no one I was acquainted with has died from the virus. That would be different. Right? But we got through. Most of our friends never got infected at all and the ones that did, got through. I’ve had an easy time in this pandemic. I think we’ve all had an easy time in this pandemic. This is partly because, you know, we’re professional class people. It’s a lot harder if you have to go to work and take, you know, take your health in your hands every day.
Becky Miller: Any short term lingering symptoms or long term lingering symptoms is I think you’ve, we’ve already talked about that …
Don Ringe: Except from the reactivated sciatica, which is lingering on as a damned nuisance. No. Yeah, it’s … obviously after I’d got my weight back, it took me a while to get my strength back. I’ve been going out and walking as much as possible. But aside from that, no, there don’t seem to be any long term consequences.
Becky Miller: This is a little bit off topic, but I just have to ask, given who, Beth, your wife is, and your daughter, Emma, who finished art school. Did they have any kind of creative responses to this pandemic, like in terms of mask making, given that they’re such wonderful artists and craftspeople?
Don Ringe: As a matter of fact, Emma made several masks for us. She got hold of a pattern on the Web that had been worked out by a nurse and made several masks to the pattern. They’re quite good. They’re very large. They cover everything they’re supposed to. Of course we also bought masks. It’s not hard to come up with masks anymore. But at first the masks we had were the ones Emma made and that was extremely helpful.
Becky Miller: How is your family adapting to this — what you kind of referred to as “new normal,” and then you sort of backed off that. …I know Lucy is still in school and Emma might be going back to school? How are your lives going forward in the next few weeks? What’s changed? What’s the same? Are things under control?
Don Ringe: Lucy is perfectly happy to do school virtually. She got used to that during the spring term. After all, for someone still in high school — the term lasted into June, like well into the lockdown. So, she has no problem with virtual school this coming year. How long it will be is unsure, possibly the whole year. Emma is between years, anyway. She got one degree and is thinking about what to do next. She’s actually working for a local thrift shop right now. For all of us, being cooped up in the house has been, has been a little hard. And that’s completely typical, you know, to judge from talking to our friends. Beth has been taking online classes. For a while, we were both taking an online class in chamber music appreciation. Some musicians that we know have a concert at their house every Wednesday evening. And we go to listen to that. So, you know, we’re finding things to do. Beth goes out and draws every day when the weather is acceptable to do so. We’ve adapted. It’s not as good as it was, but, you know, we can take another several months of this. That much seems clear.
Becky Miller: So it seems to me that one of the things that really emerged from our talk just now is your lack of, or it’s not lack of concern, but your… courage going forward. I guess one hopes that you are in fact immune to COVID-19, but you mentioned that if you’re not, you aren’t afraid …
Don Ringe: No.
Becky Miller: … of getting it again. Is that the case?
Don Ringe: Yes. I think it’s much more unlikely that I would get it again, then say the hyper cautious CDC is willing to say, right? You need to remember there are millions of people in this country who hate and resent experts and want to see nothing more than the experts be wrong, even if it hurts them personally. Right? So of course the CDC is going to say, “Well, we don’t have the data. We’re pretty sure you are immune for three months.” Experienced doctors seem to be sure that we’re going to be immune for a lot more than three months, right? For SARS and MERS, It’s apparently a year. Of course, for the flu, it’s not so good, but the flu mutates all over the place and apparently fairly few mutations of COVID-19 have been discovered. And the ones that have been discovered have no effect on how it latches onto human cells. So it’s conceivable that we’re immune forever. But, yeah. My tolerance for risk includes potential tolerance of getting it again.
Becky Miller: I must say that that is an oddly positive outcome.
Don Ringe: Yeah. Yeah. We really got something for being sick, right. This is the best possible outcome: to have it and then be immune for quite a while. And to know what you’re dealing with. One reason for not being afraid is that I know what I’m dealing with. Right? I’ve seen it once already. It’s a little bit like those people who had a close brush with death when they were young and are upbeat and optimistic for the rest of their lives. Like I did not have a close brush with death, but I was very sick and it’s made me upbeat and optimistic in much the same way!
Becky Miller: Right. Well, I would also just think that we read in the newspaper about severe cases of people who do not make it. But we don’t necessarily hear so much about people who really … I mean, I would describe what you described as a severe case. You were quite ill for three weeks. Maybe call it a moderate case or however you want to use the word, but the fact is that there are many people like you who’ve, been very uncomfortable for quite some time, but …
Don Ringe: It’s a typical outcome, you know. Maybe not as typical as a really mild case. Apparently those are probably much more prevalent than we have any idea because people never get tested if they don’t develop symptoms or don’t develop much in the way of symptoms. But yes, cases like mine are, in one sense, typical.
Becky Miller: Right.
Don Ringe: And you don’t hear much about it. No, you don’t.
Becky Miller: No. No. So we’re kind of nearing the end of my questions here. But … we talked about a number of things, and I just wonder if … you have any other reflections or maybe filling in some information that we may not have covered about your experience with COVID-19. The aftermath, anything you might have to add or any kind of after thoughts that you just want to add.
Don Ringe: Everybody tells you to be prepared by, you know, laying in two weeks worth of supplies. Right. And it’s, it’s not a bad idea. But if you really do get the virus, you won’t be using a lot of them. You’re not gonna feel like eating much. All that rice and all those canned and dried beans and pasta! You’re going to have it for a while after you’ve recovered. Right? I think mental or psychological or emotional preparation is maybe better. The author of the article in the New York Times, encouraging people to take all reasonable precautions and then think about tolerating and managing risk. That’s really, really good advice. I think she really hit it right on the nose. That’s what people ought to be concentrating on. And, if you don’t have a family who can take care of you, stay close to some of your friends who might be able to at least, you know, drop stuff off on your porch or whatever. Because it’s a whole lot easier to get through this if you’re not alone.
Becky Miller: Right. This has been really great. I appreciate very much you taking the time to talk to us. And I’m just going to stop recording and then I’ll see you on the other end. So just hang there for a second, okay, Don?
Don Ringe: Yes.
Becky Miller: Okay. Thank you again.
Don Ringe: That’s ok!