By Rachel Back
Senior, English, IUPUI
COVID-19 has altered our world. From the way we go about everyday things, to the people we’re allowed to come in contact with, to the way many people function at school and work and play – just about everything has changed. The pandemic has touched the lives of nearly every individual in some way. Here are three of those stories.
Jada, Front Desk Supervisor, Indianapolis, Indiana
Jada, a Front Desk Supervisor at the Hilton in downtown Indianapolis, has endured many professional and personal changes since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. She’s had to deal with policy changes, staff cuts, and has felt the impact of the coronavirus deeply in her personal life.
When the pandemic started, the stability that was Jada’s world was quickly stripped away. Her work days and work week were shortened in an effort by the hotel to save money. As occupancy fell, her concerns grew. The hotel, once a bustling environment filled with workers and guests, came to a grinding halt within a month.
“Occupancy has dropped down to 1-5%, whereas typically in March and April it’s between 80-100% at all times because Indianapolis is a convention city and the Indy 500 events are usually scheduled at this time,” she explained.
Jada is one of the hotel’s few employees who was able to keep her position, but that has not eased her anxiety. The dramatic drop in guests has left her wondering if she could soon be unemployed, as a staggering 90% of employees have lost their jobs.
“I lost half of my team in one day,” she said. “I started leaving my phone volume on when I went to bed, so if I got a call from HR I wouldn’t miss it.”
Although Jada is still employed, she’s having to deal with new policies designed to keep everyone still around safe. Jada is sanitizing everything from the front desk to the lobby, to the computer area, to the keys when they are returned from guests.
For Jada, COVID-19 has touched more than her professional life. While she lives in Indianapolis, her family lives several hours away.
“I haven’t seen my family in quite some time,” she said. “Many of them are immunocompromised, and several of them are essential workers. So despite the fact I would love to see my siblings and parents, it's left to texting and video calls.”
So when she’s not at work, Jada is in her apartment with only her cat Chunky for company. Jada feels this distance more greatly now as many of her relatives have had the virus. There have been 4 confirmed cases in her extended family including her aunt and her grandparents. While most of them have now recovered from the illness, her grandfather, Bill, passed away.
“I didn’t think about it before I lost my grandpa, but we can’t hold a funeral service for him. It’s really delayed the grieving process.”
Libby Peters, Family Medicine Resident, Cincinnati, Ohio
Libby Peters -- professionally known as Dr. Peters -- works in Family Medicine at Christ Hospital in Cincinnati, where she is completing her residency to become a primary care physician. Libby has watched as “healthcare has been forced to progress and adapt and innovate” in an attempt to keep pace with the rapidly evolving global COVID-19 pandemic. She says the hospital is making great strides to ensure that their employees stay healthy during these difficult times.
Before the coronavirus outbreak, Libby was scheduled to leave on Easter Sunday to work at a clinic in Guatemala as a part of her residency program, but that was canceled when their borders closed. So she was reassigned to the inpatient unit where the doctors have been split into two teams, a COVID team and a non-COVID team. Libby has been assigned to the non-COVID team so doesn’t see COVID patients unless she’s on call and has to admit them.
Libby also spends at least one-half day a week working in the hospital’s outpatient clinic. This too has undergone massive changes as she’s experienced, “a crash course in telemedicine,” which has resulted in her seeing only one patient in person for an entire month.
“I’m really happy that we can offer this to patients; it helps us keep the most vulnerable people safe.” She explains, adding that they’ve recently added video visits. “It’s been a little stressful doing sessions from home -- it was a nerve wracking experience at first -- having patients see into my home. They can hear my dog bark in the background. But it’s nice to meet patients where they are during this time in order to help them.”
She now starts her day with a temperature check before being allowed to work, one of many new protective steps. One of the biggest changes Libby has faced is the effect of new regulations related to personal protective equipment (PPE), such as wearing masks and goggles/face shields.
“The goggles give me a headache, but the PPE makes me feel safer, and I like to think that it makes the patients feel safer as well. It’s also the right thing to be doing and that outweighs the discomfort.”
With the hospital's concerns about conserving PPE, she is now given two masks at the beginning of the week that she rotates throughout her work week.
“I always have a mask and goggles in my car now because I have to wear them all day,” she says. Despite these changes and restrictions Libby is still quite confident in her safety.
“I’m not nervous or scared we’ll run out, and I don’t feel like my safety is at risk. I get two for the week but I can always ask for more if they’re soiled,” she explained.
Like Jada, Libby had also experienced unpredictable side effects within her personal life. Libby feels that a stigma has been created around healthcare workers.
“People don’t want to be near me because I might have it,” she says.
She has felt this ring true in many ways, as her own family views her to be more “dangerous” because she is a doctor. She experienced this change in other ways as well. Back in March her fiancé, Kyle, was asked to work from home over a week before other employees, specifically because he lived with a doctor and they feared he would be exposed through her and they wanted to help prevent him from bringing the virus back to their office.
All of these unforeseen consequences and concerns left her wondering if she should stay someplace else but they’ve opted to stay together in their place.
Still, COVID-19 has brought opportunities to her life that would not have otherwise existed. Now that her fiancé is working from home they’ve been able to adopt a puppy, Igby, to fill some of their free time.
Stefanie Day, Professor of Psychology and a Counselor, Columbus, Ohio
Stefanie Day, a professor of psychology and a counselor at Ohio State University, has felt the impact of COVID-19 in many ways. In addition to having to record her lectures instead of giving them in person, the private practice she works at has had to discontinue their services, but the impact to her personal life is much greater.
Stephanie has been diagnosed with COVID-19 and she is immunocompromised due to many health issues. So when she heard the coronavirus was spreading she knew immediately she would end up contracting it.
“I get sick every year with whatever is going around,” she explained.
And true to her predictions, she contracted COVID-19 in late February through community spread, which is the term for how people contract the virus when they don’t know specifically how or from whom they caught it. So somewhere between her job at OSU, where she provides counseling to college students, working at a private practice, and lecturing at Columbus State Community College, she was exposed. She hadn’t been anywhere “interesting,” she said. She was just going to work and “living a very boring life.”
Her symptoms started to appear on Wednesday, March 4. After a 3-hour lecture her throat began to hurt but she assumed it was simply due to the length of time she had been talking and thought nothing more of it at the time. However, by Friday she had a cough, a runny nose, and a fever.
By Monday morning, though, the only symptom remaining was her cough, so she figured she probably just had a head cold. When the next Friday rolled around and she still had a persistent cough, she decided it was time to call her doctor. It was then she was told she was already doing everything they would tell her to do after a visit, but she could go to an urgent care facility. So she did.
“I bet you think you have COVID,” the doctor said to her upon arrival.
In reality Stefanie thought just the opposite and without any testing, she was diagnosed with bronchitis and given antibiotics and an inhaler in case she got an infection. So Stefanie went to work the following three days where she told everyone she had bronchitis.
“Who knew I was lying? I didn’t.”
Despite her diagnosis, Stefanie was still concerned at the possibility of exposing her daughter -- who has multiple health issues and disabilities -- because she lives nearby and visits often.
“What if I really do have COVID?” she wondered. “What if she comes over and it kills her?”
With a referral from her doctor to a testing center that had just opened she was finally able to get tested. Despite being told it would take 4 to 5 days to get the results, within 4 hours she learned that she was negative for both Flu A and B.
But it would be another 9 days before Stefanie learned she had tested positive for the coronavirus.
By the time she received her results, a month had passed since she had contracted COVID-19. After letting her family know about her diagnosis she began to wonder if she needed to do more as she thought about her coworkers and students she had come in contact with over that month. So she took it upon herself to notify everyone she knew she had made contact with, thus doing her own contact tracing.
She has since recovered from the virus and her isolation time has ended.
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The novel coronavirus has had a severe impact on everyday life for many of us. For me personally, COVID-19 has changed the very foundation of my world. Before the coronavirus I was a full time college student enjoying attending classes on campus, and now I’ve been forced to reconcile with a complete shift to online learning. I wish I could say that’s where the difficulties end, but it isn’t. My mental health has deteriorated from all of the abrupt changes -- like I imagine it has for many individuals.
These new complications are trying, but they do not have to define the situation we’re living through. There is a bright side to be found in all of this if only we take the time to look at how society has come together in these trying times. Despite the agony of living through this historical time, we will come out the other side and we will be better.