A pot, some water, eucalyptus oil, and a towel....breathe

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Media

Title (Dublin Core)

A pot, some water, eucalyptus oil, and a towel....breathe

Disclaimer (Dublin Core)

DISCLAIMER: This item may have been submitted in response to a school assignment prompt. See Linked Data.

Description (Dublin Core)

My brother and I went to visit our parents in Florida for Christmas in 2019. We flew out of Clarksburg, WV on December 23rd and arrived in Florida a few hours later. Christmas in Florida with our parents was great, but eventually we learned it came at a cost. We returned to the Orlando airport to leave December 30th and our flight was delayed for three hours with no real explanation as to why. We roamed the Airport and kept ourselves occupied before we were finally able to board the plane. We landed safely back in WV a few hours later. However, a day or two after returning I started to feel sick which got progressively worse. I had trouble breathing and my body ached so much that I could barely sleep. I didn’t have the strength to really do anything, and I hardly ate because I couldn’t taste or smell. I called my mom at some point and told her how sick I was, and she told me that my brother was extremely sick too. She pleaded with me to go to the doctor, but I told her it was probably just the flu and I’d be ok. My mother knew I wasn’t going to go to the doctor any time soon, so she told me to use some Eucalyptus oil to help with my congestion and respiratory issues. I grabbed a large pot and boiled some water. After the water had boiled, I added drops of eucalyptus essential oil. With a towel over my head, I began to take in the vapors, and slowly I started to feel like I could breathe once again. This became my ritual for the next week or so. I was probably doing this 3-4 times a day when I had the strength to leave my bed. I believe I was sick for nearly two weeks. The day before I finally started to feel better, I almost went to the hospital because I legitimately thought I was dying. Anyways, after news of the pandemic started ramping up, I later found out that Florida had their first Covid-19 cases in December 2019. I’m guessing that airport delay ultimately sealed our fates and that’s where my brother and I ended up getting Covid (our parents didn’t get sick).

For my post I’ve included an audio file recreating my Covid ritual of boiling water and breathing in eucalyptus vapors. You can hear the water boiling, the glass bottle of eucalyptus oil being opened and then placed on the counter. You can hear a slight rustling from the towel and me taking in the vapors.

Date (Dublin Core)

January 4, 2020

Creator (Dublin Core)

Tanner Belldina

Contributor (Dublin Core)

Tanner Belldina

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

HST643

Partner (Dublin Core)

Arizona State University

Type (Dublin Core)

audio

text story

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English Health & Wellness

English Travel

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

home remedy

symptom

sense

essential oil

vapor

airport

water

Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)

sensory history

home remedies

symptoms

senses

Florida

West Virginia

Linked Data (Dublin Core)

Sensory history submissions and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

02/04/2022

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

03/16/2022

06/10/2022

Item sets

Covid 19

This item was submitted on February 4, 2022 by Tanner Belldina using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive

Click here to view the collected data.

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