It started with a scratchy throat. I didn’t feel sick, and I had just read a story about how the Giant Sahara Dust Cloud was in Florida and I’ve been extra careful about social distancing and wearing a mask whenever I left the house, so I didn’t think I had contracted COVID-19.
However, given the seriousness of the virus and a couple of health issues I have, I didn’t want to take any chances so I quarantined myself and scheduled a COVID rapid test at The Center.
The test was relatively painless, just a finger prick and a little blood onto what looked like a pregnancy test and a few seconds later a negative test result. Super! I was instantly relieved, must just be allergies. It wasn’t COVID but my symptoms were getting worse. My scratchy throat turned into a pain that felt like someone had their hand wrapped around my neck. I ended up going home and taking some medicine, thinking I would be fine with some rest.
My roommates are all essential workers, so they were concerned when I came home with symptoms but I assured them I tested negative and it was probably just a cold.
I got into bed as my brother and his wife (two of my roommates) headed up to Georgia to say goodbye to our father, who was in his final days after fighting is own non-COVID-related illness. I had planned to go see him over the next weekend when I was feeling better.
The next day I woke up in a pool of sweat, feeling like someone was standing on my back. I couldn’t catch my breath, my joints ached and my abdomen felt like I had been doing crunches for hours. I took my temperature, 100.1, and I had this strange feeling of my body feeling so hot but my limbs felt ice cold.
Another two days in bed and the symptoms got worse. The aches in my body became painful and it felt like my bones were crumbling into dust when I moved. I would wake every few hours, feeling like I was in a swimming pool. When it felt like a heart attack was coming I went to the ER.
They quarantined me in a room, hanging a sign notifying passersby that it was dangerous to be around me. A nurse and a doctor, covered head to toe in protective equipment, entered the room and talked to me about my symptoms. They retested me. This time it was the swab up the nose. I was sent home with an inhaler and bag full of meds and told to quarantine until I heard from them. They called me the next day to tell me I tested positive for COVID-19.
I called my brother to tell him and asked how he was feeling. He had a cough. For safety reasons, both he and his wife had already been tested at one of the Orange County locations a week prior. They didn’t hear back about those results for nearly two weeks when they got a call saying the findings were inconclusive. They were retested and my brother eventually found out he was positive. His wife came back negative.
Everyone who had visited my parents to say their goodbyes to my father all had to be tested. Some of them have gotten their results, others have been waiting for days and weeks. My mother, older brother and sister all are quarantined and sick. My mother’s results came back positive. My grandmother and aunts came back positive. They were being as safe and cautious as possible and it didn’t matter.
My father passed away while I was quarantined. I didn’t get to see him before he passed and I didn’t get to attend the funeral. Several family members couldn’t attend.
My symptoms slowly lessened. I started to feel stronger and could breathe better with each day. More than three weeks later, I am starting to feel normal again. The cough continues to linger and I still get tired and rundown every now and then. Throughout the entire process, the symptoms have ebb and flowed, leaving me to think I was getting better and then get worse. I don’t know if this virus will leave permanent scars inside but it will definitely leave emotional ones.
I don’t know from who or where I got it. I have been to the grocery store and shopped near people who refuse to wear a mask and who don’t understand the concept of social distancing. I use to get annoyed when I would see people online complaining about wearing masks, now I can’t watch them because they make me angry. I’m angry that someone can be so uncaring to put their neighbors at risk; the pure ignorance of these people who put there heads in the sand to avoid hearing commonsense science on this virus and claiming their freedoms are being infringed upon.
I am a veteran. My father was a veteran. We fought for this country and your freedoms. Not wearing a mask is not you exercising your freedom; it is you endangering the lives of other Americans. In my eyes, that makes you a domestic terrorist.
Wear your mask, socially distance and realize this world is about more than you and your “freedom.”
Be safe out there and take care of yourselves and those around you.
