Covid-19 is as elusive as it is dangerous. It is  a roll of the dice as to how it will affect someone. But, you may be thinking, no way I would ever get it. Well,  you would be wrong. In fact, I know someone who got Covid-19. My very own sister. You might be thinking, wow what an irresponsible citizen, I bet she was out partying and swapping spit with strangers. You’d be wrong again! So please, put your assumptions aside for this account of a Covid-19 case. 

Let’s start from the beginning. When asked when and where the patient, Madeline Rohn, got Covid, she says “I caught Covid the week before Halloween from work.” 

You may be wondering how risky her lifestyle must have been for her to catch Covid. When asked, she states, “At this point I was going to work every day, five days a week, saw some family and the same couple of friends a few times a month as well. Seeing my friends was probably the riskiest thing I did, but it didn’t end up contributing to me getting Covid since I got it at work, which couldn’t be avoided.” 

Covid is known to affect people in vastly different ways, from a mild cough to hospitalization. When asked about her symptoms my sister says, “At first my bosses both thought they had a mild flu and decided to take a test just to be safe, so I quarantined as well and scheduled a test, too. I didn’t get symptoms until about five days after they started showing symptoms. It started with feeling really nauseous and after that all the symptoms came in waves. I had headaches, really bad exhaustion, nausea, a sore throat, and a cough. For the most part it all felt like a bad flu, and I felt pretty lucky to have a pretty mild form of covid.” 

There are many awful things that come along with having a disease like Covid-19. But which was the worst? Madeline states, “The last two days were the worst. I had severe chest pain and it was a little hard to take deep breaths. The worst part of the experience though was by far being completely isolated in my apartment for two weeks while I quarantined. Also, the mental toll it took on me knowing I had a disease people died from and the anxiety that comes with that was rough. Especially during the last two days when the chest pain got really bad.” 

When asked about her overall experience, she says, “Overall my experience was, of course, bad, but I felt fortunate I didn’t get it as bad as many other people. It also made me realize how uncontrollable the disease [can be]. People have to go to work. My boss is a lawyer and she caught Covid at court (her workplace), she gave it to her husband who brought it to his workplace and infected his entire staff, and I am their nanny, so I caught it at my workplace as well. All those people could have avoided contracting Covid if the workplaces had been shut down.”