Dale and Sherry Grizzle, an elderly couple from Georgia, took a dream cruise in the Pacific, but it turned into a nightmare.
They happened to be aboard the Diamond Princess, which had hundreds of passengers come down with the coronavirus. The couple was brought on land in Japan, where Dale stayed for quarantine. Sherry was among the passengers brought to Washington state, where she remained for three weeks — the longest they’ve been apart in decades.
They said being separated was the worst part about being stricken with the illness.
‘We’ve never been apart like this before, and it was pretty stressful. That may have been the worst part of the whole deal,’ Dale Grizzle, 69, told Fox & Friends Weekend on Sunday.
Sherry said her symptoms initially resembled a common cold.
“When I first started having symptoms, it was just a mild sore throat and a headache and that lasted for several days. … I didn’t think anything of it, but Dale had already been diagnosed so I began to wonder if maybe I had the virus also,” Sherry said.
Dale, 69, said: “I ran a fever for about two and a half weeks that I couldn’t seem to get rid of, and I developed some pneumonia, a milder case of pneumonia, but pneumonia nonetheless, and it was stubborn, but thankfully it didn’t turn into a real bad case so I was able to overcome it.”
Both are fully recovered.
“I couldn’t have asked for any better care. The team of doctors and nurses that took care of me were absolutely awesome, and I can never thank them enough for the care that I received,” Dale said.
Their story mirrors that of others who have contracted then recovered from the fast-spreading virus. For most people, COVID-19 brings only mild symptoms, like a dry cough, fever and headache.
Carl Goldman, 67, and his wife were also aboard the Diamond Princess.
On Day 16, while the ship was docked in Hong Kong, a passenger was diagnosed with a new infection spreading in China — the coronavirus. The captain doubled the ship’s speed and raced back to Yokohama, Japan, on Feb. 3, entering port a day earlier than planned.
“When we sat down to take off I dozed off, it was the middle of the night, [I] woke up two hours later with a very heavy fever. It was over 103,” Goldman told “Fox & Friends” earlier this month. “There was a doctor on board the plane. He put us in a quarantine area and we flew on to Travis Air Force base.”