Column: I went on break and all I got was COVID-19
Content note: This is an opinion article and should be taken as such. The contents of this article are the opinions of the writer and are not the beliefs of the staff, student body or institution.
I am three months into being 19. I trained as a Junior-Olympic gymnast for 12 years. Compared to the rest of my immediate family, I should be the healthiest.
I didn’t think that I would be the one to get COVID-19. I spent too many nights agonizing over the fear that someone I loved would get it, not me.
Summer break doesn’t mean much to me. I enjoy taking summer courses and I coach at the gym nearly every day, some shifts lasting 12 hours.
I planned on getting credits, putting more money into savings and getting a lot of impulse tattoos (I did, three times in March).
So, with lockdowns halting any daily wandering about Augusta and Aiken, I planned to throw myself into my courses and job for however long it would stay open.
My dad works at Augusta University Medical Center as a family practitioner, meaning he is in the clinic often, exposed.
I attended protests. Two of them.
I don’t regret it in the slightest. I wore a mask. I avoided people like the plague was present, literally.
From someone who has had COVID-19, albeit mild, let me detail the experience.
As with most cases, I felt exhausted at first. I blamed it on working early mornings, and staying up late with classes. But by the third day of this fatigue, my chest began hurting.
I’ve had issues with my heart before, but this time was different. I wasn’t experiencing an irregular heartbeat or bouts of intense rapid heartbeat, but rather it felt that my rib cage couldn’t expand. It felt like two arms were constantly wrapped around my middle, muscles taut and breaths just never quite enough.
Discomfort began on the fifth day, I suspected I had it.
The day after I scheduled my drive through for the coronavirus test, I had a fever. Beyond the fatigue, which left me awake for only six to ten hours a day, I was hit with intense body aching.
I remember writhing in bed with particularly cruel growing pains as a kid, especially as a gymnast, but with the virus, it was no longer a localized pain, rather an ebb and flow of full-body aches that washed down from the base of my skull down to my ankles.
I was breathless and lightheaded getting out of bed. I lost some of my sense of taste and smell. There were a few moments when I was scared it would get worse, and that the medicine wouldn’t reduce the fever, and it would keep climbing.
I began breaking 100 degrees, then 102, then edging on 103. My parents told me they checked my oxygen stats overnight with my dad’s tools from work, but I don’t remember it.
The day I got my test back, we weren’t surprised. I let my professors, friends and family I had been in contact with know. I contemplated filing for an incomplete grade due to the exhaustion. Thankfully, the mornings where I could stand being awake I worked ahead, finishing my courses.
For the following five days, it’s more of muddled recollections instead of clear flashbacks. Like looking into a densely fogged mirror, just rivulets that barely let you clearly glimpse onto the surface. There were some brief periods where I felt “okay,” and others where my skin burned from underneath and I couldn’t see straight.
On the days I felt okay, I worked ahead in my sociology class, finishing discussion boards and likely irritating everybody on my Snapchat to entertain myself. I drove my car and sat in it to watch the sunset while people walked outside.
It was ironic, the way it turned out. I expected my dad to get it, or my mom from going grocery shopping. We wore masks early on. Every time we went out, we washed our hands and wiped down surfaces. We were sure we would not get it.
But that’s the thing, even if you do everything right, the virus is still here.
I could have picked it up from breaking the “no-touch” rule at the gym to emergency spot a gymnast. I could have picked it up getting groceries, I could have picked it up anywhere. After attending the protests, I let everybody I remembered meeting there know that they could have been exposed.
Luckily, the second week eased up. I finished my courses and returned to work two weeks later. For a month following my illness, I felt fatigued, achy.
I had already planned on going mostly remote, if not fully, by May. I managed to get all remote USC Aiken classes, and one in-person class at Augusta University, where I am dual-enrolled. Unfortunately, chemistry and lab courses require face-to-face instruction.
I’m fully recovered now. I joke about it often, but I am excruciatingly aware of the risk, and you should be too.
I only have 32 credits left to complete before I finish my degree requirements. I don’t want COVID-19 to put that on hold again. So I urge you to do no harm, live mindfully.
