SOQUEL—Allen Stobaugh and his wife Mary were at the tail end of a 15-day cruise to the Hawaiian Islands—and were on their way for a final stop in Ensenada, Mexico—when their trip was waylaid by the novel coronavirus.
Twenty-one passengers tested positive for the coronavirus, and one died.
Stobaugh, 76, was one of those who tested positive. He returned home on Friday after being quarantined at Miramar Air Force Base in San Diego for three weeks.
The Soquel couple was aboard the Grand Princess Cruise Ship when the sickness struck, causing it to reroute toward San Francisco from where the trip began.
But when that city refused to allow passengers to debark after learning that passengers had flu-like symptoms, the ship spent several days at sea before being allowed to dock at the Port of Oakland.
The couple spent 18 days in quarantine there. Mary Stobaugh did not contract the virus, and was sent home.
Allen Stobaugh was sent via a private plane to Miramar. There, he spent time on a ventilator, an experience he compared to having two garden hoses shoved down his throat.
“Ventilated like I was, you don’t have any control of your thoughts or anything for however long they’ve got you under,” he said. ‘It just went from bad to worse. I thought I was dying. I didn’t know what was going on–I was completely out of it. At times I would wake up and say to myself, God I want to die. I don’t like this.”
Since his recovery, Stobaugh has been tested three times, all of which have returned negative results.
“I feel weak, but I’m going to be OK,” he said. “It was scary.”
