Between March 2020, when the pandemic shut our lives down, and November of the same year, I was living in an alternate reality where COVID wasn’t real. Objectively, I knew that it existed. I understood the importance of wearing masks and taking safety precautions, which I did. School had shut down and we were home for our long confinement — a span of timeless days that stretched from the end of spring break to the end of summer.
School started back up again, and our district decided to offer both in-person and remote learning options. There were some tense school board meetings about a mask mandate for students and anyone coming into the building for events. Rationality and science won the day, and school resumed in a semi-normal state, with numerous adjustments to prevent students from gathering in large groups.
At this point, COVID still didn’t seem real
It was more like a boogie man that I should know objectively wasn’t real, but had seeped into my subconscious. I began having recurring nightmares about my students packing into the gym for an assembly with no masks on. Yet every morning I swept those from my mind and went to work. It was the stuff of dreams, no more. I began to wonder if the whole pandemic wasn’t being blown out of proportion in some ways.
Then, my best friend contracted COVID-19
She likely got it from working at our school where she teaches high school science. I knew she was afraid of catching it and was trying to be as careful as she could, due to the fact that she was in a high-risk category for autoimmune problems. Not only that, she just found out she was pregnant again after suffering a devastating miscarriage two years ago. Still, she was my age — young — and I thought she’d have it, be miserable, get better, finish her quarantine, and be back at school in two weeks.
I was wrong. And my entire perception about COVID-19 changed. It was no longer intangible. It was no longer a wisp of a nightmare, a cryptid, a rumor. It nearly killed my friend Shawna.
Shawna had mild symptoms at first. She was still texting and calling our friend group from work and complaining about not having enough shows to watch. Then, one evening, about a week before Thanksgiving, a selfie popped up in the group chat. It was Shawna, in a hospital gown, some kind of tube taped to her nose. She was making a goofy “Why me?” type face. She’d ended up with such a high fever that her husband decided to take her to the emergency room. She answered a few more texts and sent a few more hospital selfies with filters.
Then came the silence
It was a few days before I realized how dire Shawna’s situation was. I heard from her husband that she was not only hospitalized with COVID-19, she was in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator.
As a Midwestern woman of a certain age, I don’t always allow myself to feel feelings when something tragic happens. I just get into “fix it” mode. My friends and I arranged for meals to be delivered to Shawna’s husband while she was in the hospital, set up a GoFundMe page, and hired local kids to shovel their sidewalks and driveway when it inevitably snowed, so Shawna’s husband, Grant, wouldn’t be bothered.
We had minimal updates from Grant, and my friends and I just kept texting Shawna’s phone, praying that she would be able to read our messages of love when she awoke.
At one point, the ICU staff started to revive her. Her oxygen levels were steady enough and they wanted to get her out of the coma as soon as possible. I was able to call and talk to her, though she could not answer, since the tube had shredded her vocal cords.
The nurses told me she was smiling and nodding. I tried to stay upbeat, just talk about school and her dogs, but I couldn’t help the horrible feeling that this was goodbye. Goodbye to my generous, hardworking, beautiful friend. Goodbye to an amazing teacher who made a difference with hundreds of students. Goodbye to someone who felt like a sister.
Later, Grant told me that the doctors called three times to summon him to the hospital because, as he put it, “This might be the end.”
It wasn’t
Shawna is a fighter, and after two weeks in a coma and five total weeks in the hospital, she recovered enough to go home. While she was in the ICU, she had another miscarriage.
I was overwhelmed with joy and thankfulness that she was home. But little did any of us know how devastated Shawna’s body was as a result of her ordeal. She has been home since Christmas, but as of this writing, she is still unable to work. She has permanent nerve damage in her legs, and one foot, it seems, will always have “drop foot” — meaning she cannot flex backward with her foot. She may have to walk with a brace for the rest of her life.
Her vocal cords have also sustained heavy damage, and assuming she can return to teaching, she will need to use assistive technology such as an in-class microphone in order to be heard by her students.
When COVID came for my best friend, it got personal. That’s when all of my patience with people who won’t wear masks or believe the pandemic is a hoax ran out. Completely. Now when I see someone not wearing a mask or deliberately not wearing it properly, it takes every fiber of my strength to not scream at them, “My best friend almost died! And 500,000 have actually died! Don’t you care?! What kind of monster are you?!” In all honesty, if I analyze it enough, I think these folks just literally don’t understand how dire the situation is, and must not know anyone who has died or almost died of COVID-19.
That’s why it’s become so important for people to share their personal stories and struggles, especially the heartbreaking details, such as miscarriage or permanent nerve damage. Shawna has shared her story on social media and with our local newspaper in an effort to let people in our community know how deadly serious this virus is. I can only hope that her message has reached the people who need to hear it most.
