Journey Through COVID

When math teacher Ginney Randall caught Covid, it wasn’t like any sickness she’s been through.

Mrs. Randall first got COVID in December 2020 but as the Virus spread through her body, it was making its way through her family.

“At first it was just me and my husband and one of my youngest daughters,” Randall said. “Then within a couple of days after that, we ended up with everybody in the house.” 

Mrs. Randall found joy in her situation as her family would make sure she was not alone. 

“We were all feeling kind of bad,” Randall said. “We played some games, ordered from Amazon, we had something to do. It was fun to at least have something to do together.” 

For her daughter, Lily, joy came from a different activity.

“I listened to a lot of music,” Lily said. ” It was like my safe space to go to while being sick.”

The family experienced COVID fears through their battle. 

“My husband had some of the conditions that they were saying,” Randall said. “ He’s pre-diabetic, overweight and had some of the conditions that were saying you have a 73% chance of dying of COVID if this happens. It was a little scary.” 

With Randall being a teacher, fears about her husband weren’t the only ones blooming.

“I was worried about how in the heck I was going to catch my students up,” Randall said. “That was the worst thing as a teacher was like how are we going to recover from this and be able to accomplish the things that we are supposed to be doing?” 

Lily she experienced firsthand how hard being a student while being sick is.

“I was trying to do schoolwork,” Lily said. “It didn’t go very well. I was really tired most of the time and I couldn’t focus a whole lot. I just really wanted sleep.”

But COVID wasn’t the only thing Lily was tired of.

“I mostly was just missing being around other people,” Lily said. “I was just stuck with the same four people for that entire time.”

After the virus, going back to normal did not feel normal at all for Mrs. Randall. 

”The first time was weird,” Randall said. “Because I was trying to get back in it and it was stressful trying to finish everything. A lot was going on trying to get back to normal because it didn’t feel like anything was ever going to be normal again.” 

But as Mrs. Randall recovered, some things never went back to the way they were.

“There still some things I can’t taste but, apples still tasted good so that’s my new favorite fruit now because it’s one of the things that I can fully taste,”Randall said. 

This isn’t Mrs. Randall’s first journey with COVID. 

“The first time, it only took a little longer than 10 days,” Randall said. “But the second time was different altogether and just a different experience for my body and my mind.” 

Mrs. Randall makes it clear that COVID isn’t like any of the other viruses.

“COVID is not as same as the flu,” Randall said. “You feel different. But the biggest thing is you don’t know how it’s going to affect you and the scarier part is you don’t know what to expect with it.”