From dglobe.com/news/local
By Samuel Martin
From home to overseas, Covid was never far behind
WORTHINGTON — Even though Covid-19 has changed everyone’s lives in one way or another, it feels like a lifetime ago since I was in the thick of it. I came into the pandemic as a Minnesota West student and came out the other side a Media Studies major at the University of Sioux Falls. Friends have been made, family has been lost and toilet paper will no longer be taken for granted.
I vividly remember my Ethics Theory and Practice professor Maureen Sander at Minnesota West telling us just weeks before the spring break of 2020 that there was a new illness in Wuhan, China that had spread throughout the country and was beginning to spread into Europe. She asked the class what we made of these reports and cases growing in number. I said nothing, thinking that it wouldn’t make its way across the Atlantic or Pacific. Just several weeks later, I and everyone else in the United States was proven wrong.
My family and I were spending what was my spring break in Mesa, Arizona, where my Grandpa and Grandma Martin went to snowbird, when I got news that my break would be extended by another two weeks. I was mixed on the move; two more weeks meant two more weeks of me playing guitar, which is always welcomed! On the other hand, it also meant two weeks of me not keeping up my progress in math, a subject I have never excelled in.
As we all know, those weeks turned into months. My grade in algebra plummeted to a D+ as I was unable to work one-on-one with my professor, Mike Wieslink. Our choir’s plan to perform “For Good” — originally to have been sung live at graduation commencement — had to be done from the comfort of our homes, where we recorded each of our voice parts to be put together in a video. Even graduation lacked pomp and fanfare. My family watched online as my sister and I graduated from college. My best friend, Max Langerud, and I had made plans to go biking around the lake that day and as soon as my name was called, I said, “Ay! …alright, I’m gonna go into town and bike with Max.”
One thing that struck me was how desolate everything was, especially in Worthington. I began playing Dungeons and Dragons with my dear childhood friends and the streets were nearly empty when I’d drive over to play our weekly campaigns at one of their homes. At Wal-Mart, the chaos and desolation among the aisles and store shelves weren’t too far from being something out of a “Mad Max” movie. Shelves were half-empty, items were strewn about… It still confuses me that toilet paper, of all things, was in such high demand. At one point, I took one of only four packs of toilet paper still left on the shelf.
After several months of ennui and being in a lockdown where I could only either call or meet up with people over Zoom, I finally started the next chapter in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where I had transferred to the University of Sioux Falls. While masks were still required during my first year there, there were in-person classes again.
It didn’t take me long to make some of my closest and dearest friends. In less than a month, I became one of 15 members of an elite friend group known as the Goon Squad. At the first of our many Chili’s dinners — where we are now essentially on a first name basis with the staff and have gone through enough strawberry lemonade to quench a small village’s thirst — I realized I had found my people.
However, even USF wasn’t immune to the hang-ups of Covid-19. In my first of three Madrigals at college, we would be lucky to have a full ensemble at rehearsal. At one point, I vividly remember being one of eight students at rehearsal while the other eight were in quarantine. As a result of the ongoing pandemic, we didn't have a live theatre dinner performance and instead filmed it to be aired on local TV the following month. In my regular coursework, over a week of my theology class was done online while my professor and his wife were in quarantine.
There was one loss from my life before Covid-19 that still creeps its way back into my life. On April 1, 2021. I lost my great-grandma Helen at the age of 93. She was one of my seven great-grandparents that I had met, and arguably the one I was closest with. At least once a month, we would have half-hour phone calls where she did most of the talking and I’d just nod my head and go, “Mm-hmm. Yep. Uh-huh.” We were so close that my dad joked that I was her favourite. In late 2020, she contracted Covid-19 and not long after would die from residual complications of the virus.
Just a month before, I was among the many students at USF who had finally gotten their first Covid vaccine, with the clinic offered in our on-campus library. I was also one of many who had an adverse reaction to it. I had a headache, a low grade fever and shivers, all of which went on for two days.
My first bout with Covid came just after I returned from a choir tour in Italy in May 2022. In order to return to the States, we all had to test negative the night before (it was the first time I had ever administered a test of my own). After flying out of Rome, we laid over in Paris for several hours before making our way to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. It was on the bus ride back to Sioux Falls, South Dakota that something felt… off. I was sweating profusely and I had that tender soreness at the back of my throat that’s never a good sign.
After moving back home the next day, there was coughing and lots of it. I took a test that afternoon and saw two pink lines. I had tested positive. Also at home was my sister, who had contracted it in Florida while visiting a college friend. It was maybe just the next day that my mom tested positive and was quarantined in my room with me, where she slept for hours uninterrupted. Two days later, I saw that my dad was home, which was unusual for him on a Friday. Soon after, mom saw me sitting on the couch next to dad and asked why in the world we were sitting together. I just looked at her and said, “Dad tested positive this morning.”
What a weird time Covid was. I lost a loved one and gained over a dozen more. I traveled the world and came back with a souvenir I would’ve never dreamed of bringing back and sharing with my family. I had to learn how to be a student online. I had more free time than I knew what to do with at a time where I couldn’t do anything with it. And yet, I survived. In a way, that’s what life is. Losses, gains, adaptation, new journeys.
Life goes on, even — as I learned — in the middle of a pandemic that brings the world to a halt.
https://www.dglobe.com/news/local/column-diary-of-a-covid-shut-in
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