A popular Danville dentist and bandleader says he is thankful to have only had mild symptoms of COVID-19 after testing positive last week.
Dr. Randal Ashton, who has owned his Danville practice since 1992, leads “Doc Ashton and the Root Canals” and serves as vice president of the Danville school board, said Wednesday afternoon he plans to leave his house later this week for the first time in several days.
He said he has been held up inside only two rooms in his house, participating in a virtual school board meeting and calling in to his Friday morning WDAN radio show during his time in quarantine.
Ashton says he first developed symptoms over Labor Day weekend, when he came down with a runny nose.
“And at first I just thought it was allergies,” he explained. “I never had a temp over 100, but I went warm, so I went, ‘You know, why don’t I get tested just in case, because I got this runny nose in the middle of September.’ You shouldn’t probably have something like that, and that’s what happened.”
Ashton says he closed his office last week out of an abundance of caution. However, he says nobody who works at his practice came down with the virus, and none of his family members tested positive, either.
“Which, that begs the question: Where did I get it?,” Ashton wonders. “If all my staff is negative, my family’s negative, we’re still trying to figure out how did I get it?”
COVID-19 can cause a wide range of symptoms and even life-threatening complications. To that end, Ashton says he is thankful he did not develop any of the major symptoms that others have.
“I have other friends who have gone through this, too, and they came out going pretty well, with only mild symptoms,” he says. “That doesn’t happen for everybody. So I feel very fortunate and thankful that this is the route that it took for me.”
After taking last Sunday night off (due to Lincoln Park being booked for another event), Ashton and the Root Canals will return to Lincoln Park this weekend as they have for several weeks this summer.
