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  2020-04-28

  My Covid-19 Experience

  Brenna Condon 4/28/2020 Covid-19 Archives My Covid-19 Experience I had just left London, England on March 10, and two days later, the entire United States cancelled all international travel. Another two days later, domestic travel was restricted. My family and I had just barely missed it and could have been stuck in a foreign country indefinitely. This was so scary to us all, but we were relieved to get home. But we still decided to self-quarantine once back just to be sure. After two full weeks back, no one had experienced any of the symptoms. My parents both work for American Airlines, so they come into contact with hundreds of people daily. 90% of flights were cancelled, but even with that, they are still currently (April 28th) being called out to flights which scares the hell out of me. It only takes one person to infect hundreds around them, and that could be my parents. My dad had just come home from a Philadelphia flight, and he had gotten sick on it and said he had the chills as I picked him up from the airport. I drove us home with my tshirt pulled up over my nose just in case, as we did not have any masks with us at the time. My mom and I carefully sanitized anything he could have touched and made him sequester himself to the guest bedroom where he stayed for 48 hours. The third day of symptoms, he was strong enough to call a pop-up clinic and request to have the Covid test to see if he had contracted it. He had priority to take a test since he is considered an essential worker and had a great amount of exposure very recently. Luckily, we found out the following day that it was negative and we were all so relieved. But it is still quite possible that we had it earlier in the year when my mom and I had the weirdest ‘flu-like’ symptoms that lasted over a week. If I am able, I would like to take the antibody test to know if I could be able to donate blood or plasma to those who need it the most. The Coronavirus and the national lock-downs is an experience I will never forget and hope to never see again.