By Rachel Engel
WICHITA FALLS, Texas — Fire Chief Ken Prillaman’s most obvious COVID-19 system was exhaustion.
“It wasn’t cold and flu symptoms, so much as it was that I was fatigued at a level that I don’t recall ever being fatigued to before,” he said.
After testing positive for the virus, Prillaman buckled down for quarantine but was unprepared for the ups and downs he was in for.
“I had a combination of symptoms, including the fatigue, which didn’t go away for eight or 10 days,” he said. “It was all I could do to move from a bed to a recliner.”
He was also experiencing extreme internal body chemistry swings.
“Regulating my body temperature was almost impossible. I would go from being so cold my teeth were chattering, to literally breaking out in a sweat,” Prillaman said. “[The fever] had reached 106 degrees which, for anybody, is a number that you shouldn’t deal with for very long and luckily we got that under control.”
A cough developed, gradually increasing to a point that prevented him from speaking to people.
“I had a non-productive dry cough for so many days and it was so active that by the end of the first week I had completely lost my voice,” the chief said. “Just communicating with Deb, our kids or grandkids during FaceTime was impossible from that point on.”
Even after quarantining for the full 14 days, Prillaman said he was not back at 100%.
“I still had to guard my energy and manage where I was placing my energy throughout the day so that I could make it through the day,” he said. “So, for me it was 19 days; it was quarantine plus five more days before I felt like I was really ready.”
Prillaman said he’s not sure where he contracted the virus, and said he was as vigilant as possible prior to getting sick.
“From a compliance standpoint, I worked real hard up to my sickness at being compliant,” he said. “We feel like over the past six or seven months we’ve only done two things here: we’ve either responded to emergency calls or we’ve been wiping something down. We clean this place several times a day.”
Prillaman emphasized the importance of maintaining public health safety measures, even if you think you’ll be OK.
“Everybody’s got to do their part,” he said. “Don’t apply a narrative of, ‘Well, I know someone who got it and they didn’t have any symptoms, therefore I don’t have to worry about it.’ This thing is non-discriminatory, and it has a random method of really impacting people in a serious way.”
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