Let me start out by answering a few questions. Yes, I am fully vaccinated and have been since May. No, I was not infected by going to any parties. Yes, I was infected by a nonvaccinated person. Battling Covid-19 has not been a fun experience and I wish it on nobody. Thankfully, I don’t have all the bad symptoms and I don’t have it as bad as my unvaccinated roommates, but it’s still no laughing matter. This is my experience with Covid-19.
9/7:
I got the call in the afternoon that one of my roommates tested positive for the virus. Just days before, he and his significant other were laughing that they couldn’t taste or smell. I knew right from the start it was Covid. I was devastated when I received the call that my boyfriend tested positive, also losing his sense of taste and smell. Right after receiving this call, I masked up and left for the urgent care to get tested. Thankfully, it came back negative but the doctor told me to return in 2-4 days, or when and if I developed symptoms. He also warned me to keep my mask on regardless of being indoors or outdoors to keep those around me safe. I was back on campus at this point and only took my mask off when I was showering, eating, drinking, or sleeping. I kept my distance but still kept in touch with my sick boyfriend as he endured his first day of aches, pains, chills, and more.
9/8:
After a long and exhausting day of stressing myself out over a project, I could finally take a breath of relief. My 5pm class was cancelled, and my project wasn’t due until the next class on Monday. However, that relief didn’t last long. After sitting around all day and working on homework and crafts, I felt suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. My roommate and I headed to bed where I later felt my throat and ears starting to hurt. I went to bed, noting how I felt.
9/9:
I woke up and knew it was time to go to the urgent care. My nose was severely congested, my ears were hurting terribly, and my throat felt like I was swallowing rough marbles. I masked up, got dressed, and rushed to the urgent care to get retested. I walked in at 8:26am and was sitting in a lobby full of sick children, adults, and the young boy next to me just trying to get a sports physical done for school. I told the nurse at the desk my symptoms and that I was exposed, but she told me to have a seat again and the nurse would be right with me. When I was finally taken back to a room, the doctor came in after an eternity. He told me that, since I was experiencing a sore throat, he wanted to test me for Strep Throat first. I protested, but eventually let him. That test came back with an unsurprising result: negative. He finally decided to test me for Covid after I had been waiting for over an hour. Not even ten minutes later, he came in and apologized and told me I was positive. I went into panic mode. I was utterly terrified. How many people were at risk? What would my family say? What does that mean for me? At this point in the day, it was only a little after 10:30am.
After receiving my results, I rushed out and broke down in my car. I called my mom, sobbing into the phone. My older brother had battled Covid almost a year ago and here I was testing positive myself. I had my roommate pack me a small bag and I headed to my house to quarantine with my boyfriend, his sister, and her boyfriend. All these individuals tested positive for Covid. My mother dropped a small bag of snacks, juice, vitamins, and a cute stuffed sloth. This made me very happy and relaxed while I was trying to get in contact with my professors about arranging to attend class other ways. I also had to contact my job, the University, and my work-study advisors. God bless my philosophy professor when I reached out because, I won’t name names, he called me to say if I needed anything at all, including grocery shopping, to reach out. Right after offering this, he asked me to text him my address here in Scranton so he could send me over some pizza. He told me to do it only if I felt comfortable enough. Not having to worry about dinner on an already stressful day was wonderful.
With every day, my experience just seemed to worsen. I lost my sense of taste and smell. My boyfriend and I called our experience ‘tasting textures’. It was awful. It made all food seem unappetizing, but my stomach was telling me to eat. Thankfully, my taste came back after only two days. My sense of smell, however, is taking forever to return. Congestion was the biggest problem then right next to exhaustion. People from the University called me for contact tracing, my roommate had to be tested, my coworkers had to watch for symptoms, and that still didn’t stop the spread. My roommate at my quarantine location managed to get another person infected.
Covid was a horrible experience that I wish upon nobody. It was miserable, exhausting, and frustrating. It all started because someone in the house shared a drink with a person at work. That person later tested positive. It took less than a week for that one guy at work to infect six additional people. He was vaccinated. Just try and stay safe out there and please take my experience as a sign to be careful.