Encyclopedia Britannica

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I contracted Covid-19 (2)...

My oral temperature was 101 degrees Fahrenheit, and I was put in an isolation room for my appointment. My provider, thankfully wearing complete PPE, performed a quick flu test (Influenza A, B, and RSV), which resulted negative that same day. It would later reflex to COVID-19 bc of the negative result and I then began the seven-day wait for results.
My symptoms, however, only continued to worsen. The fever was unrelenting. I had no appetite. I had lost about 10 pounds. I loaded up on my daily multivitamins and Emergen-C; I continued to use Tylenol every six hours because my body was asking for ANYTHING to take away the misery.
By Day 7, still feeling chills in the morning, I opted out of using any Tylenol and tried to help my body fight this virus on its own. I attempted a little home bodyweight workout and instantly got lightheaded and felt very nauseous. My body was still desperately fighting this thing.
Day 8: I woke up in the usual sweats from the night before, but felt no fever or chills during the day—I felt much improved. I told myself I would take it easy that day. I was begging and pleading to God for an end to all of this.
After waiting SEVEN ENTIRE DAYS in self-quarantine, I finally received my results: positive for COVID-19, continue self-quarantine for another seven days.
By Day 13, I had not used any fever-reducing medicine in six days. For the last few days, my symptoms were mostly confined to nighttime-fatigue, sweats, chills, but by Day 13, all of my symptoms had completely gone away. I reintroduced exercise little by little and could now get through a whole hour workout without getting totally winded.

Why am I telling this story?
Because I encourage you to learn from my mistakes. Because I didn’t listen when numbers started climbing. And now they continue to climb. Over 15 million patients diagnosed in our country, more than 280,000 people deceased.
Because this virus is REAL. And it SUCKS. Bc I am a “healthy young adult,” but “mild” COVID-19 made my life a living hell.
Because people around the world are DYING from this virus—and doctors must make resource allocation decisions as to who should get that last ICU bed or that last ventilator because hospitals are at FULL CAPACITY.
We NEED you to STAY HOME, because our health professionals are RUNNING out of masks for themselves and ventilators for patients. The CDC is so desperate that they recently issued new guidelines for health professionals to use bandanas and scarves as substitutes for N95 masks. We NEED you to STAY HOME because these health professionals are sacrificing their lives at the frontline to make sure those affected can stay alive.
Now is NOT the time to go to that party. Now is NOT the time to meet up friends at the bar, to go out to eat, to celebrate your spring break, to go to the beach or the park. I promise you, the celebration can wait.
So please, as a young adult, I implore for all of you to STAY HOME. I firsthand can now see how this VIRUS takes LIVES. 1 out of 5 people hospitalized from COVID-19 are young adults aged 20-44; as many as 10-20 percent of people show no symptoms, so you may be spreading this virus and injuring those you love without realizing it. We DON’T know who has it and who does not, and we do not have the resources to test everyone, so please STAY HOME. Social-distancing and self-quarantine is just as important for the ELDERLY as for the YOUTH.
We NEED you to do your part to FLATTEN the curve and prevent the growing spread to more and more people every day. If we all do our part, then this self-quarantine can eventually come to an end and we can soon resume what our lives used to be.
My name is Donya and I am NOT Invincible. And neither are you.

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I contracted Covid-19!! (1)

I have the coronavirus and hope you’ll act like you have it too.
I realized quite suddenly while making soup two Mondays ago that I couldn’t smell anything. Not the pan full of chopped onions, the herbs or any of the use-what-I-have ingredients dumped in from my fridge.I had started feeling sick a few nights before and already decided to self-isolate completely in my house until I felt better, but hadn’t been that worried. My cough was wet, so I figured it was just a cold. But this was different, and matched what I’d read could be an early sign of COVID-19.

That’s the nature of this disease — it can be merely uncomfortable or potentially deadly, but for many, confirmation begins with these deceptively simple, irrefutable symptoms.
At least once a day, I warmed up another bowl of my grab-bag soup and wondered if it was somehow miraculously delicious, or so terrible as to be barely edible. Who could know? I was alone in my house, and my sense of taste and smell had vanished.

I wouldn’t go in for a test until that weekend, after talking to a doctor on the phone, but the lack of taste and smell acted as confirmation even before the positive test result.
I have been extremely lucky. I have felt pretty awful — an intense cough and body aches, consistent low fever, sore throat, headaches and a strong desire to lie back down on the rare occasion that I’m not already horizontal in bed — but for me, the virus has basically been akin to a bad cold or flu. I don’t have any underlying conditions and have yet to develop any medically serious symptoms.
My story is to warn you that this is not the common cold or a regular flu. This virus is serious.
My name is Donya, and I am an otherwise healthy young & active girl with no past medical history. I am a health freak, I work out five to six times a week, I have a six-pack on a good day, and I completely took my health for granted.
I thought I was INVINCIBLE—I thought I was immune to this coronavirus because I am healthy and young. But boy I was wrong!

In early March, reports of novel transmission of the coronavirus were just starting to appear in the United States. It was a precarious situation, but community transmission of the virus was not quite so widespread.
‘Sure, I’ll wash my hands,’ ‘I’ll social distance after that party,’ I thought.
Looking back, there were too many opportunities for me to have caught this virus. I did not take my health seriously. I figured I could avoid the virus, but in the off-chance I were to get it, it would be like a mild flu or a bad cold. I flew home from a two-month trip to my homeland, ventured on long flights home and around lots of people in Iran & JFK airport. I went to a beach party in Los Angeles and saw lots of friends. I was not careful. I did not take the necessary precautions. I did not think it could happen to me. The fact of the matter is – you NEVER know.

A day after arriving back in LA, symptoms started to kick in. On September 12, I woke up with fever, chills, fatigue, generalized muscle aches, and joint pain. Probably just a bad case of the flu, right? No cough, no shortness of breath, no difficulty breathing, no respiratory problems whatsoever. No nausea, no diarrhea. JUST Fever and chills.
Thinking ‘I’ll get over it soon,’ I took some Ibuprofen and Tylenol and stayed in bed most of the day. The next day, I had a routine doctor’s appointment. I was almost turned away because of my symptoms, but I fought to be seen.

Continued...

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Why Returning to Our Roots is so Meaningful?

Why is it so meaningful to return to where your ancestors are from? To visit places you only know from stories & pics?
I’ve asked myself that every time I thought to travel to my grandpa’s hometown in Iran.  Standing in front of the villa he used to own feels like I’m visiting an old friend; sitting in the ornate Viennese-style café he and my granny used to frequent makes my heart soar. In Niavaran, I am not only able to see & touch the past, I can be inside of it.

Nevertheless, why would I feel such emotion & travel to a place I myself never lived in? A place whose memory I only inherited? In May of this year I finally traveled to Tehran from Los Angeles.

When I set out to visit the sites of the family’s past, I was worried that the house might not be there anymore.
Thankfully, it was still there in blue-gray shingles tucked into the bend of a road. Presumably it has stood empty since after World War II, when our family, along w everyone else of German heritage, left Iran.

Taking Home a Piece of the past I fell in love w the intricate patterns of the slate shingles on the outside walls of the upper floors; now more of them were dangling. I even found two of them on the ground, entirely intact, and I took one home. I’m holding that shingle in my hand now.

I could just see my Great-Great-Grand father standing at this Railing. On the mill’s covered walkway, shards of glass and siding crunched under my feet. According to Opa, that's my gradpa, his father always wore a carnation in his lapel, an oddly dapper outfit for the owner of a vast land, but—“he loved flowers.” Opa’s mother was more practical: She was generally exasperated with Opa, who “had only books in his head” & loved to sit in one of the windows, munching butter sandwiches as he read.

The place’s main door creaked open when I pushed it & I poked around.The rooms stood silent & empty, draped in cobwebs, sunlight streaming through the broken windows. I was astounded by how moving it was to be walking through the same rooms my Opa had played in, to now be inside the very walls that contained his childhood stories. The image of all family life buzzing about! Buildings & places last longer than we do, & this decrepit house, this very spot on Earth contained my history & allowed me for a few moments, to touch the past. I didn’t trust the integrity of the stairs to visit the “big room” upstairs where Opa used to sleep, unperturbed by the mill’s erstwhile noises: the gong of the grandfather clock, the rush of the mill stream & the churn of it's wheel.

Outside again, I searched for the mill stone, stumbling through the thickets around the building until I teetered on the rim of an overgrown concrete grid. A jungle of shrubbery beckoned below. As I was contemplating whether I was really standing on the former mill contraption, I reached into my pants pocket for a tissue. With it, my car key slipped out & dropped into the porous ground below me.

“This didn’t just happen!” I said.
I groped among the weeds & peered into few holes. “It’s gone. I can’t see a thing.”“There should be an opening there to operate the wheel.”
“How extraordinary,” I thought “That this should happen here, in Opa’s place!”
I kept marveling at the fact that I had lost the key among the remnants of my family’s past. Driving away, it felt as if my anxiety over the key’s recovery had left a bit of my heart there.
It seems to me that returning to my roots filled a hole in my understanding of the past. My family’s house was the manifestation of a hole in my past, a property that was abandoned. 
How symbolic then, that my car key should drop into a hole at that very site & very hole where the mill’s turbine used to churn to generate the family’s livelihood. I felt as if that key, flying by the layers of concrete fell from my sunny world to the dank cavern below, stitched together the decades of family history. Now I lived there a little, too. And what ties you more to a place than a story?

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