Jonathan Rice
Humans of ISU features stories from the Indiana State University campus, two years into the global Covid-19 pandemic. Each person’s story is told in their own words and reported by a journalist in the COMM422 Community Journalism course.
“My COVID experience started September 4th, 2021. The night before, I went skating with friends at Wigwam skating and went to Ripley’s Beach Bar afterwards. Then, the morning after I thought I just had a really bad hangover. My head was aching really really bad and of course I was dehydrated from my extra-curricular activities and didn’t have much of an appetite, so I spent most of the day just sleeping. But as I woke up in between naps, I felt that my health was deteriorating. Later on that night, I started getting a fever. My temperature was around 101 degrees and I started to feel muscle aches, body chills as well. That was alarming to me, so I decided to quarantine myself until I got some answers. I scheduled an appointment that following Monday to get tested to see if I had COVID 19 — which I ended up testing positive for. The first two days were the worst, that’s when all the symptoms started to hit me all at once. I had all of them including fever, chills, muscle aches, fatigue, congestion, headaches, loss of taste and smell. Because I had Covid-19, I was not able to go to work and I was still required to do all my homework even though I was still having to nurse my health. My girlfriend at the time, Jailyn, she was taking care of me. She helped me run errands and get fluids for me because I could not hold anything down. I decided to write notes about what I was experiencing for my mental health’s sake. After the first couple of days, I was in pretty good health compared to before because my body built up the immune system to fight it off. Also, because I was partially vaccinated at the time, I was able to recover quicker because I was at 80% immunity.
Honestly, it affected me in ways that I didn’t expect. I got finished with quarantine and found it hard for me to be social because I was boxed in a room for two consecutive weeks all by myself. I lost some of my people skills, two weeks of pay. I felt behind on life. When you miss two weeks of life it’s hard to catch up and it was very discouraging. I think overall, the Covid-19 experience taught me a lot about safety, taking precautions, even when you’re being social. It also showed me that this pandemic doesn’t pick and choose who it will and will not affect.”
