Items
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no toilet paper
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2022-02-26
My Personal Experience with COVID-19
It was Christmas of 2020, and my eighty-four-year-old Dad was really sick. Up until then he had been healthy. He worked out at the gym every day and always went for coffee at Starbucks afterwards. I call him every day, and I could tell he was under the weather, but he didn’t want to admit he had COVID-19. He was sick for several weeks but came over on Christmas Eve to have dinner with our family. I remember being slightly irritated that he did come over because we could have brought him dinner at his house and minimized exposure to everyone else. Fortunately, our family and my sister’s family did not catch it that year. Oddly enough, we wouldn’t catch it until the following year. I remember being sort of surprised that we didn’t catch it because everyone around us had it. When the gyms and restaurants and grocery stores all closed, I would walk around our subdivision everyday to continue my exercise routine and I noticed I was tired and had shortness of breath. I remember going in for my annual physical with a face mask on and telling my doctor my symptoms. I remember him saying that those symptoms were too early to be COVID-19 and was probably a milder version of the flu. I was doubtful due to being heavily exposed by my dad, as well as so many others who had no idea they had it but were technically “super-spreaders.” My sister’s family and our family caught Covid within a week or two of each other despite not having any contact and being vaccinated the prior year. My husband and I both opted for the Johnson& Johnson vaccination because it was traditional with just the one shot. Our friend, who worked with my husband also got the same vaccination. My husband and I were sick after the shot, but we knew from friends that we would be. It lasted maybe a night and then we felt better the next day. Our friend wound up in the hospital after her vaccination with a small intestinal blockage which she blamed on the shot. She stayed in the hospital for about a week, but other than some follow-up monitoring, she is ok. Shortly after that, we read in the news that several women had died from embolisms after receiving the vaccination. Our daughter, who has special needs, sees many doctors and I remember telling him that I just gotten vaccinated and now there was this complication. He was very reassuring and said that the women who had passed away probably had a serious and pre-existing condition. He told me to stay active for the next week or two and drink lots of water which I did, but it was the longest two weeks until we were cleared from the risk. We did end up catching Covid in February-March 2022. It had been a normal week. I went to the store, gym, did carpool, walked the greenway, but I felt slightly off all week long. I remember coming home and making dinner, but I was exhausted and told my husband that I was unable to have dinner with everyone that evening. Sure enough, I was running a low fever. I took an at-home COVID test, and my results showed I was positive within a few seconds. I immediately quarantined in our bedroom for the next several days. My husband caught it about a week later, but his symptoms were different than mine. He had a bad sore throat and was cold and shivering for a couple of days, and had a cough that lingered. Our daughter, who has severe Cerebral Palsy, caught it next but thankfully she only had mild symptoms for two days and recovered almost immediately. Our son caught it last, and he had a very bad sore throat for a week. We made it through, and consider ourselves fortunate that we recovered without long-term issues. -
2020-03
empty shelves
My plaque story begins in March 2020, right in the middle of my senior year of my senior year of high school. that day we were let out of school for, what we were told, 2 weeks. One of my friends was away at a baseball camp that night and he had left his car in our school parking lot so me and my friends decided to go to the grocery store, buy a bunch of Saran Wrap, and Saran Wrap his car. At this point the amount that the pandemic would affect our lives hadn't sank in yet but when we got to the grocery store to buy the wrap we saw a very surreal sight. Hundreds of people were there wearing masks and gloves, and even goggles. People were buying canned food and toilet paper in mass quantities and there were numerous empty shelves. It looked like something out of a movie and that's when it began to sink in how crazy the situation was. that same week I remember going hiking with a couple of my friends and talking about the pandemic. I remember us wondering if anyone that we knew would end up getting the virus or if it would fizzle out before it hit Pennsylvania and if or when we would go back to school to finish our senior year. It turned out that we would never go back and "two weeks to slow the spread" turned into months and then years. It is now February 2022 and our lives are still being turned upside down by this pandemic. All we can do now is hope that things eventually return to normal and that we as humans can learn from the mistakes made during this pandemic. -
2020-03-13
Empty Shelves at Target
When I went to Target to get Clorox wipes for my team, I saw the empty shelves of what should be products. It's important to record the item shortages and panic buying