Hi, we're the Briggs family!
This is how we do it during the coronavirus.
(gentle music)
Hello, this is Jeane Briggs.
And I'm Paul Briggs.
We're just giving you an update
on our family's COVID virus experience.
It was a tough experience for our family.
Out of 21 kids and Paul and myself, 12 of us have had it.
They don't test everybody,
but my chest was done at the hospital.
I was the only one who required hospitalization in the ICU.
This is where Paul spent his time quarantining.
He had to sleep down here.
When I was positive he wasn't tested
'cause they only test one person in the family.
This is his office where he works from home.
He's been working from home now, I believe, seven weeks.
I have my little tour followers.
This is Jubal, Jayla, Judah, and Jesse.
Can you tell me how you liked this quarantine
and COVID stuff going on?
We don't like it.
It's really not nice, we but really,
really want it to go away.
Joseph, our older son who works at Sam's Club,
brought it home.
He got tested, he was positive.
And then one, two, three, four days later I got dizzy,
vomiting, and some diarrhea.
Easter Sunday I wasn't feeling good and I told my family,
"You're gonna have to take me to the ER."
When I left, everybody was crying.
It was a bad scene.
(gentle music)
I never had breathing issues, never needed oxygen,
it was all my numbers, like potassium chloride,
all your heart numbers, were dangerously low.
They were afraid I was gonna have a heart attack.
Jeane's hospital week,
I mean, I came down with some symptoms
and at first I really thought
it was just more of one of my typical colds.
And then we would notice symptoms
for kids that have had it.
This is where I was in quarantine for four weeks.
This is Isaac.
He's just started his quarantine.
He had a positive test yesterday, he's asymptomatic.
You see the wipes, the Lysol spray,
and he needs his medicine.
And nobody can come into his room.
This is his bathroom now since he's positive.
The boys have to use other bathrooms in the home.
We moved the mattresses out of that room
and two of the boys are here.
We are super cleaning.
We get the kids up 30 minutes early
and they clean the whole house.
Start of the clean-- And then redo
some of the places in the evening,
so we're going through it.
Refocusing on hand washing and sanitizer.
We've always practiced good hygiene,
but to just to reemphasize and just drill that in
over and over and over again-- We have family meetings
which we did Monday and I said,
"This is how you have to use the hand sanitizer too.
"You have to do this."
So I started collecting toilet paper, not in hoarding,
but you can imagine 23 people, how much we need.
Our normal grocery shopping is like hoarding.
We've been fortunate that,
with all of the kids and ourselves who have had this,
only Jeane has had to be hospitalized.
So we've kinda been able to work through the symptoms
and deal with the issues without having any real tragic
kind of medical conditions to be concerned about.
(tense electronic music)
Even though they closed schools here,
we could go right along.
Daily life is not back to normal.
We were really looking forward to that,
thinking it was gonna start this week,
but with Isaac testing positive
we're delayed from that piece.
Fortunately, I made it out
and we are doing much better now.
We've just had so many examples of love for our family.
We just can't express our gratitude enough.
It's been wonderful.
(gentle music)