Ocar Almonte Espinal

Living with an incurable sickness for two weeks is a visceral experience. At night, while my lungs ached and my skin sweated, I got scared. The pain that came with being infected doesn’t compare with the sense of loss that inhabits the body. Compare this inexplicable feeling to walking in a dark room where you can’t hear and see nothing but you know something is near. The World Health Organization tweeted that to ease the pain they do “not recommend against the use of ibuprofen;” which helped. But there wasn’t any medication that could have cured the emptiness that came with the virus. This echoing emptiness made our household feel dark and cold. It wasn’t exactly a loss of faith but a feeling of waiting for the worst. At night, I couldn’t sleep because of this strange feeling that took command of my body. The body becomes heavy with the thought of having this incurable virus taking its toll on you. I lost control of my body completely; it wasn’t up to me anymore to live or die. My thoughts for the next two weeks were inhabited by the possibility of waking up worse. I feared that I would have woken up without being able to breath or worse.

I first heard about the novel coronavirus when I stepped onto my university campus on a typical early February morning. One of my close friends interrupted the conversation that I was having to ask me, “Oscar, did you hear about the coronavirus?” I jokingly replied, “you see, that’s why I don’t drink beer.” The Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at The Pennsylvania State University-Abington, where I work, erupted in laughter at the unconscious joke that I had made. Then I did not know that for the upcoming weeks, the conversations that I would have with my peers were going to be on the topic of this virus. Then I did not know that, in the middle of spring break, Harvard University would have switched their entire campus remotely and that other universities would have followed suit. Then I did not know that, in a matter of fifty days, my family and I would have to battle with the illness scientifically named as COVID-19.

In late March, my mother began to have an intense headache, a stuffy nose, and this unbearable pain in her left hip. My sibling and I told her that she couldn’t possibly have the coronavirus since no one in our household felt sick. She began to take Acetaminophen to ease the pain. For eight days, my mother struggled to sleep, to move, to eat and to breath which led her to wanting to take the test. The Acetaminophen was simply not working on her.

Finding a place to get tested for my mother became a struggle. The only place in the Philadelphia area at the time that was open to the public was Citizens Bank Park, but even this place limited their testing to people who were fifty or older. On the day she wanted to take the test this location was closed due to bad weather. It was frustrating to find a place to get tested, at that time it was a common frustration in the Philadelphia area. She had to wait two days to get tested and waited an extra eight painful days to finally get her results.

My mother eventually received a call telling her that she had tested positive for the incurable virus and that she needed to self-isolate. By then I had some of the symptoms.

In the middle of battling this virus I had to keep up with my studies since finals week was right around the corner. Although classes were being conducted remotely, I found myself struggling to sit and concentrate due to what my body was going through. It was intensely difficult to keep up.

How did I survive? This is a question that still boggles my mind. I yet don’t know the answer to it. Those two weeks felt like a lifetime. One thing that I know is that our family stayed together and supported each other to keep pushing through it. Thankfully all of us are finally recovered but there is still that sense of loss in our hearts. While all of us are slowly recovering, nothing could erase the memories that still continue to personally haunt me. I genuinely don’t feel recovered. I’m fearful that this virus will come back to haunt my family again. Even today, I’m grieving because even though this virus didn’t kill me, it took a part of me.

In the days following my recovery I felt grateful to survive such an uncontrollable force that was and still is consuming the world day by day. Today I’m still dealing with this titanic grief that I’m unable to shake away. As the number of American deaths due to the coronavirus rise my body continues to grieve. To tell you the truth I don’t know when I will stop grieving.