Literally Catch Anything Else, But COVID-19

By: Shivani Reddy

INITIALLY

As much as I’ve been sanitizing my hands, wearing my mask, and social distancing, I still ended up contracting COVID-19. With my high-ego thinking, I went to a small gathering for a friend’s 21st birthday party after feeling lonely due to boy problems. Which isn’t an excuse when we’re in the middle of a pandemic that hasn’t been properly handled. Honestly, I feel somewhat defeated since I was able to dodge the first and second wave, but I also know that I got my karma served hot and well to me.

My symptoms began Monday night on December 14. I felt this slightly weird and dry cough in the middle of my throat, but I was holding it down. Keep in mind this is during finals week. The next morning, I woke up with this muscle pain in my back towards my spine. I felt a slight headache and weirdly felt pain in my scalp. My nose felt stuffy and my eyes felt sore. Like, it hurt to roll my eyes when exerting some attitude. At that point, I knew I had caught it.

Just to be sure, I was able to get a COVID-19 test at Temple Student Health Services. Within 15 minutes, my results came back positive. I wasn’t shocked nor was I relieved. My first instinct was to contact the people with whom I was in close contact, the first person being my mother, then my roommate, then the couple of friends I had seen prior to the symptomatic days.

Positive COVID Test. Credit: Shivani Reddy

My mom was told by our doctor to stay home for five to seven days to see if any symptoms start to come up. Luckily, she had no symptoms during that time period. My roommate tested negative. Confusingly, my friends had also tested negative for Covid-19.

THROUGHOUT

Temple Student Health Services sent me messages through their portal to make sure I’m tracking my symptoms every day, which I religiously did. I had to isolate myself for 10 days, which I had no issues doing becauseI enjoy being alone (not to sound like a loner or anything). None of my roommates were home so I had the entire place to myself. However, I still managed to stay in my room most of the time.

If I had to go to the kitchen, I made sure to sanitize my hands and wear a mask before going down and breathing on everything. The living room is conjoined with our kitchen, I quickly thought to myself, “that is a ‘No-Go’ zone.” Orange Gatorade, Emergen-C, and cherry-flavored Halls were my best friends during this period. I bought enough from GoPuff to last me a lifetime.

During the first four days, I kept the temperature in my room to what may similarly feel like the temperature in hell-- while wearing pajama pants, a sweatshirt, and fuzzy socks. This was to help me essentially sweat the fever out. I only did this for a couple of hours and stopped it before I went to bed. It was really important for me to stay extremely hydrated during this process.

For the cough, I made sure to drink hot water mixed with apple cider vinegar and honey. This was also smart for me to do since two of the symptoms are loss of taste and smell. I would have been so upset if I lost my sense of taste because I love food so much. Just to be prepared for that day, I ordered $60 worth of rich and decadent sushi from BubbleFish on the fifth day of isolation.

I can thankfully say that I didn’t lose my sense of taste. My sense of smell was fine in the beginning, but by the end of the isolation period, it started to weaken. There was a doctor on YouTube who talked about doing, “olfactory training,” which is almost like physical therapy for your nose.

You take a couple of essential oils that have strong distinct smells and sniff each of them for at least 20 seconds, twice a day. I used eucalyptus and lemon essential oils. To really be able to get the full effect, I also used my trusty 1800 Silver Tequila because that scent has regret written all over it. Although I got to that point, I still made sure to do this PT every day even after the isolation period. Almost a week and a half later my sense of smell came back to normal.

One symptom I was meticulous about was breathing issues or even chest pain. In the past , I’ve had several instances of heart and chest pain due to cannabis-induced anxiety attacks. By the third and fourth day of isolation, I did have slight discomfort, but it felt like it was in my diaphragm more than it did my lungs or chest. If you’ve ever had painful hiccups, it’s a similar feeling except the pain is constant. Initially, it was a bit difficult to distinguish where the pain was coming from. I put my hand on my chest, ribs, and under my ribs to feel for the discomfort.

Eventually, I resorted to trial and error and pressed certain parts to feel where the pain was. I ordered a pulse oximeter that helps to measure the blood oxygen level, heartbeats per minute, and pulse. The important aspect was the blood oxygen level, which needed to stay above 95 percent, and it did.

Overall, my parents and best friends were in contact with me almost every day to see how I was doing. I was swiping left and right on boys from Bumble. I played Halo on my outdated Xbox 360. Jenna Marbles’ YouTube content combatted my slightly crazy days. The voice of Peter Griffin helped with the few certain times I felt extremely lonely.

AFTER

Towards the end of my isolation, I was feeling a lot better, with no fever-like symptoms. There were only two symptoms that took time to subside, which was the sense of smell and the coughing. *Sidenote: if you’re coughing up mucus, SPIT IT OUT! That’s literally what your body is trying to get rid of. I know it’s gross, but I promise it helps.

I used disinfectant wipes to clean every surface that I touched and haven’t touched. I cleaned my laundry, bed sheets, and blankets.

Because my isolation period ended the day of Christmas Eve, I wasn’t able to spend Christmas Day with my family, which to be quite honest, I really didn’t feel bummed about since it’s not a time I would feel most lonely. I didn’t want to run the risk of getting my family sick even if my isolation period was over.

By New Year’s Eve, the same friend who invited me to her birthday party also wanted me to come over for a party. Shocked, I told her no and that I didn’t want to run the risk of spreading or catching it again, even though the risk of catching it again is rare according to the CDC.

I thought to myself, “Damn, people really don’t give a flying fuck about this. How can people be this ignorant?” Which is ironic of me to even think given that I had gone to a maskless, social gathering.

A guy who I had been sort of talking to invited me as well, and I gave him the same answer. His responses were much more repulsive.

“It’s a 99.997% survival rate.”

“We’re young.”

“One thing I’m not a fan of is using one-liners to completely do away with any discussion.”

“People are dying of obesity too and since you care about people dying so much you must want to help all the suicide victims who are depressed about the rules?”

Basically, him trying to justify why he’s having a New Year’s Eve party.

Again, completely shocked. I almost felt a bit jealous that people can be this bluntly ignorant.

To overcome the sense of disbelief and to distract myself, I set up a small photoshoot and watched the ball drop in my room and I did cry because I was reminded of how single I was. But I just had to say to myself, “It’s just one New Year’s Eve kiss, you’ll have one next year once the new administration is sworn in.” Yes, that’s what I said through the stream of tears.

All in all, the process of catching coronavirus is really not worth it, especially, if you have underlying health conditions or would feel shame and guilt of having to tell people who you were in contact with. I know it’s been said by everyone who caught COVID-19 and people who are actually being smart about it, but please wear a mask, and especially try to avoid social gatherings.