By Khari Smart//
There I was sitting in the waiting room of an urgent care, waiting for a nurse to call me back to an exam room. I wasn’t thrilled knowing that I had to get what seemed like my one-hundredth COVID test this semester, but I was kind of glad it would give me answers to how I had been feeling the past couple of days.
On the morning of Oct. 26, I woke up from a very strange fever dream that involved one of my long-time friends being the leader of a cult.
I wish I could explain more but I couldn’t even comprehend it.
All I knew is that when I woke up, I felt off. Initially, I couldn’t put my finger on it, but as the day went on, a headache began to get increasingly more painful. I frequently get dehydrated, so I just tried to pass this headache off as my not drinking enough water that day. But in the back of my head, I knew it didn’t feel the same.
That night I went to bed hoping that I’d feel better the next day. Unfortunately, that was not the case.
I woke up the next morning in a sweat with a sore throat and the same headache. The first thing I did was hop out of bed and grab my thermometer out of my PPE kit the school had provided us when we moved in. I popped it in my mouth, hoping my temperature would come back with something in the 98 degrees range like it should. I was sitting in my bed when the thermometer started to beep. I took it out.
100 degrees flat.
I let out a big sigh and went back to bed hoping I could just sleep it off. Once I woke up a couple of hours later feeling the same, I did what most people my age do when they feel sick, start frantically searching on Google. Unfortunately, in today’s world anytime you Google any type of cold or flu-like symptom you get something about it possibly being COVID thrown in your face. It’s not the best for giving you hope.
After some extensive research, I told my roommate that I was feeling under the weather and wanted to get tested just to be sure that whatever was going on wasn’t serious. Thankfully, he agreed, and we went to a local urgent care and got tested.
Disclaimer: no matter how many times you get tested for COVID, it doesn’t become any more bearable.
After my test, I spent the rest of the week self-isolating just in case. Toward the end of the week, I started to feel better, but thenFriday hit. I woke up and hopped in the shower and after a couple of minutes, I realized I couldn’t smell my body wash. Panic hit. I got out of my shower and went to brush my teeth. To my surprise I couldn’t taste my toothpaste either.
In my head sirens were going off everywhere. I had felt like I was getting better but then out of the blue I was hit with the nail in the coffin.
Later that day my roommate received a call telling him his test results came back negative. That gave me a lot of hope, but it wouldn’t last long.
On Saturday morning I got the call that my test had come back positive. As you can imagine I wasn’t thrilled because I knew what was coming next.
Isolation.
I called the Wellness Center and went through the process, speaking to a variety of people about what was going to happen next. I had to speak with Dr. Kolb, Thomas Chatfield, Teresa Cevallos, the school’s contact tracer as well the state of Maryland’s contract tracer. They told me I would be going into 10-day isolation and I needed to start packing clothes and anything else I’d need.
A couple of hours later I received a text to head over to the 7th Street duplexes. With this being my fourth year at Hood, I can shamefully say I’ve never been there, so I didn’t know what to expect.
When I arrived, I was greeted by a school staff member who instructed me that it was just me in the house but there was a possibility that other people may end up there as well. I spent the first couple of hours setting up my room and exploring the house.
To my surprise, it is a lot bigger than it looks on the outside, but probably because it’s just me here. One thing that stuck out to me was that they left a puzzle on the dining room table. It was a 500-piece glow-in-the-dark puzzle of colorful seahorses. I had not done a puzzle in years and spent most of the first night trying to do it.
I can tell you now that I’m four days in, it’s still just me, and I gave up on the puzzle.
In my defense, it’s a hard puzzle.
As I’m finishing out my fourth day, boredom has begun to set in, and the lack of face-to-face communication is starting to get old. I look out the window each day to see the world still spinning and people still living their lives getting their coffee from the Dunkin across the street.
At this point, it almost feels like purgatory but I’m almost at the halfway mark so I’ll live.
On the bright side, I feel significantly better and today was the first day I could taste the food I was eating. Never thought I would say it, but I do miss the dining hall food. The options I’m given aren’t the best. But until I can rejoin society, I will be trying to make the best out of the remaining time I have here in my “COVID Bachelor Pad.”
To everyone on campus and at home, stay safe, and stay healthy because this is not where you want to be.
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