As I wrote in the side note of my previous Journal Assignment, I wanted to wait and see so I could write more in depth for my experience of the pandemic, but instead ended up just backlogging everything I had for this class as events played out. Events that I will now share.
My initial experience of the pandemic upon the household was actually pretty boring. Talking with my parents, daily to stave off the boredom, staying inside the house and almost never leaving, watching the news for updates. A lot of my friends and family though work essential jobs. A lot of them are NYPD, some as doctors and those in my cohort might have heard me mention a few of them are National Guard. Things started to take a turn for my mental health as I saw on the news that officers in the NYPD are testing positive for the Coronavirus, and National Guard being deployed in various hotspots. Doctors working constantly to combat the virus. One of my friends in the National Guard ended up testing positive as well and was admitted with a severe case of COVID 19. He would tell me in later events after recovering but, essentially, he would have a constant 104 degree fever and fluid were filling up his lungs preventing him from breathing. Hallucinations from the constant high fever. A change in his taste buds, where even the slightest bit of salt in food would taste like its been drenched in salt. And then there was the constant raging headaches that wouldn’t end. He told me it’s the worst thing he’s ever been sick with and to this day still has a nasty cough even a month after recovering. He’s going back for another test later this week. My dad who works for the USPS as a mail carrier, is also considered an essential job. They are still working during this pandemic. He came back home one day and was acting very suspicious. He avoided everybody, he was wearing a mask at home, and he would eat dinner only after everybody had finished eating theirs. He eventually ended up moving and sleeping in my sister’s now abandoned room since she had moved to San Francisco about 2 years ago. My mom and me were getting scared and asking him what happened and if he was sick or anything. He would reply “No problem” and playing it off. Then not too much longer he came back from home extremely early with a fever. I would end up applying for Unemployment for my mom and for COVID sick leave for my dad at the frustrating USPS site. I would consistently ask how my dad was feeling and symptoms. I would report said symptoms to my cousins who were doctors working in this pandemic. They told me to get him self isolated (which he already was) and to keep reporting symptoms. After a while they told me he MOST (almost to the point of being sure) likely had a mild case of COVID and to up our precautions around my dad and if he had trouble breathing throughout the entire day. I texted my sister and I would hear her crying over her daily conversations on speaker in their phone conversations. My dad had trouble breathing throughout the night trying to sleep and would recover in the day. Since my sister’s room is only a thin wall between us, I could hear his struggles as I tried to sleep every night. I started to get heavily depressed and extremely lethargic. I could only play games to keep my mind off of anything and tried to keep a optimistic outlook especially on my face. Reports of mass graves being dug on Hart Island didn’t exactly improve this too. When he would try to speak to me or my mom, his voice was almost completely gone. He would talk in this extremely raspy voice that didn’t even resemble close to what he normally sounds. He looked extremely weak and would lay in bed the whole day. While this was going on, he one day got up and asked me to find him a testing site in Brooklyn, to which I did. Depression kept sinking deeper and deeper. I never did find out if my dad had went or not. However one day he seemed almost energetic, he spoke to my mom and I had noticed his voice even the tiniest bit, was better. I told him this and he was croaked “Really?”. Everyday seemed to be slightly better for him and eventually he fully recovered. He wanted to go back to work and to bring back income, but my mother ended up begging/crying for him to rest at least for another week. So he did and rested still in self isolation in my sisters room. His first day back to work was last Tuesday. And since then, hes back to the same old self he was before. I don’t personally know anybody that has passed away from the virus however, I’d take boring over the hell I’ve been through for the past 4 weeks. That’s what my experience of my household has been for the pandemic.
