It started with a dinner party. 

The friendly gathering, about two weeks before the state’s stay-at-home order was put in place on March 26, brought a group of about seven together for food and fun.

“No one was sick,” said Trohe Ashley, a Highlands Ranch resident who later tested positive for COVID-19. “At the time no one thought anything of it because it was before the stay-at-home order.”

A few days after the party, Ashley, 48, and her family saw that for an incredibly discounted price, they could fly to Maui for a quick family vacation. By the time they got to Hawaii, the first symptoms had set in.

“That night, I started to feel my throat get scratchy,” she said.

A few days later her husband, Dan, 47, had the chills, but they chalked it up to a sunburn. They decided to leave the island a day early anyway, fearing the island could get shut down as the virus began to pick up speed. 

“From there it went downhill,” Ashley said.

The night they returned home, Trohe and Dan both had fevers of about 100 degrees. Trohe also had body aches, a headache and fatigue.

While her husband’s condition improved in about five days, Trohe said she remained sick for nearly a month.

Out of fear she could have pneumonia, she decided to go to the doctor. Even though she was told she wouldn’t be able to get tested for the novel coronavirus at the appointment, when Trohe arrived, that’s exactly what happened.

The next afternoon, March 31, her doctor called and said she had tested positive. Then came another call, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, asking her to help them retrace her steps. 

Before long, Ashley learned that almost everyone at the March dinner party tested positive for the virus.

“One of us must have had it,” she said. “We had all been going to the grocery store. Who knows which one of us brought it in?”

About 10 days after her first symptom, things got much worse. She got up the morning of March 26 and when she got in the shower, she noticed something strange. 

“I couldn’t smell my shampoo and I was like that’s weird,” she said.

She went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee and the strangeness continued.

“I couldn’t taste the coffee — it tasted like warm water,” she said.

Then, she had another 10 days with the illness with more intense symptoms.

“I had five days just in bed. I couldn’t lift my head off the pillow,” she said. 

The coughing didn’t begin until the end of her bout with the illness, she said. On April 5, her fever broke and she began slowly improving, though difficulty breathing persisted. 

Now that she’s recovered, she’s working on ways to help others with the virus. The American Red Cross recently contacted her asking her to donate plasma to help people hospitalized with the virus. This treatment, intended for high-risk and life-threatening cases of COVID-19, is currently being evaluated, according to the American Red Cross.