Story and Photos by Dillon Berrus
I still remember the first day I heard about this disease. At the time, I was planning to travel to Virginia for a conference, and then Florida for spring break with my friend.
What a time that was! When money was the only concern and college was still normal.
As time progressed and the United States picked up its first case in early March, I grew nervous knowing that three days later I would find myself driving to Fairfax Virginia for the annual Northern Short Course professional photojournalism convention where I would be meeting with leading industry professionals and other students. I did make it to the Northern Short Course, but there was too much risk going to Florida. I was back home in Lowville NY and there were already cases of COVID-19 in the state.
Soon after returning home, RIT responded to the crisis by joining the increasing number of colleges moving to remote learning. Because Lowville isn’t far from Rochester, I drove back to campus to empty my dorm.
It was surreal and uncomfortable. I still had work to be done at school and it felt wrong to leave, but I had few options.
Amidst all the emotional anxiety of packing up, I started to have a cough, then aches and pains and finally severe body chills and fatigue. I was supposed to drive directly home but after loading one of many boxes I was exhausted. This alarmed me. I knew things were bad. I finished packing and went home the next day. My temperature read 101˚F.
With all of the information I was seeing and reading, the next morning I went to the clinic to be tested for COVID-19. Thankfully, one benefit of living in a small rural town is that we had tests available, unlike many parts of the country. Results would take 7-10 days, so after getting tested, I returned home for my first days of official quarantine, which I assumed would feel like a year. I braced for the storm coming but it was not enough.
As the days lingered on, I spent my time taking my temperature, coughing, sleeping, and trying to do schoolwork when I felt up for it.
My mental state deteriorated to a dark place.
I started to keep a journal the day I got home from school in order to document my experiences better, but I swiftly lost ambition, drive, motivation, and at times hope.
Over the course of the week my health became worse before it slowly began to improve. Even that didn’t seem to matter. Sick or not, the state of the world was, and continues to be, terrifying. I spent uncountable hours reading the New York Times and watching their live update map of cases grow. The red circles indicating risk areas grew from east to west, slowly edging from New York to meet with the spread from California and Washington. It looked like the United States itself was getting smallpox.
I raged at the president and his incompetency to handle this pandemic well. I raged at my four walls that had become my life. I stared out the window sad and defeated. I was an extrovert in a cage.
Six days went by until I got a call from the hospital. I was very excited to finally get some results from my test. That elation was crushed just moments later when I learned that there had been an error in the lab and that my test, along with two others, had been thrown away. I was livid.
By the time I retook the COVID-19 test my symptoms had nearly vanished. I was still quarantined, though, and was seemingly healthy. I continued to find interest, time and energy for schoolwork the best that I could, but my mental health was taking a beating. After a 2-week long results process, twice the time it should have taken, I got my results back: negative. I was relieved but I was not happy. I may not be sick anymore, but I am still an extrovert stuck in a cage.
