Jessica & Jillian
PHOTOGRAPHED BY MORGANA WINGARD
Jillian: I was studying abroad in Florence, Italy. At the end of February all my classes were moved online for two weeks. Nobody knew what was going on. This was when Europe first started getting serious. My friends and my roommates immediately booked flights home for the end of the week because we figured the flights were going to get expensive and might get sold out. We had to take care of this as quickly as we could. So, we all booked flights home right away. But, my sister and I were supposed to go to Barcelona that weekend and visit friends. Everything still seemed to be running smoothly in the rest of Europe. So the two of us went to Barcelona. Everything was normal there. My friends' classes were still going normal. Corona wasn’t a thing there yet. So, we went to Barcelona, stayed with our friends, just the two of us for a week.
Abroadfest happens in Barcelona every year. Everyone who is studying abroad in all of Europe goes to Barcelona for a big festival. We went to that which is where we think we probably got it. There were people from all over Europe— London, Amsterdam—still coming to Barcelona because at that point it was really just Italy. So, everybody was still going to this Abroadfest. Everything was running as if it's normal. That’s when my friend that we were staying with got an email from her school that her classes were being cancelled and moving to online. So, as we were staying there, day by day we saw in front of our eyes things start to get worse and worse.
We went to Amsterdam on the 10th or 11th of March. Even though we had seen things getting a little bit worse in Barcelona, things in Amsterdam were still okay enough that it was okay to go there. We were at the Heineken museum when they started to kick people out of the museum because things were closing earlier than they were supposed to. That day they started to shut the country down. Everything was following what we were doing basically. That night the president made a speech saying that everyone has to come now or you're not gonna be able to come home. We later found out it was a mistake. He meant to say “unless you're American.” We were supposed to go to Dublin and Paris for another week, but we immediately cancelled the rest of our trip and booked a flight home for the next day.
As soon as we got home, we went to our rooms. We didn't touch our mom or our sister. We were using one bathroom. They were using another bathroom. We tried to really isolate ourselves from them. All four of us were self-isolating. And then, a few days after being home, we found out one of the roommates of the girl we were staying with in Barcelona tested positive. Then our friend got tested and she was positive. Then, a bunch of people we had come in contact with in Barcelona tested positive. At that point we didn't even know that Coronavirus was in Barcelona. We were seeing my friends from school, running over to them, giving them hugs, saying hi to everybody. Then we went home and found out they all tested positive for corona.
When I came back home I had very, very minor symptoms. I had a very minor sore throat. My body felt achy. That was maybe two or three days. Nothing serious at all. I was thinking about coronavirus and thought maybe I had it. But, I didn't actually think I would have it at all. Since we knew some people who had it, we decided to get tested to be sure because we figured it's better to know.
Jessica: I had a very runny nose, pretty much the whole time we were away in Europe. I thought there's no way it'll be coronavirus because they specifically say that a runny nose is not one of the symptoms. So I didn't think that I had it. Then, when we found out that a bunch of people that we had come in contact with were testing positive, we went and got tested with our mom and sister. The two of them tested negative and we both tested positive. Jillian got the call first that she was positive. I thought, “Oh my gosh, what's going to happen to her?” I was a little nervous. And then I tested positive as well. We were so lucky that we had such minor symptoms, but the health department called us every day for about a week, checking in to see how our symptoms were and how we were feeling just to keep up with how things were progressing in New York. He said that once we were symptom-free for about 14 days we'd be able to go out and be a part of the world again and it would be best if we were the ones that did the grocery shopping. So that's really the only other reason we leave the house: to go grocery shopping.
Once we were symptom-free, after about 14 days, that's when we found out about plasma donation through Facebook. My mom is big on Facebook. She came across a post from somebody looking for plasma. So she got in contact with them. It was kind of like a confusing process at the time. I don't know if it's gotten easier now. She got in contact with the family and then the family contacted the doctor. She was talking to the daughter of this man who was on a ventilator at White Plains Hospital. the daughter got in contact with her father's doctor. The doctor then had to call the blood center and then the blood center had to call us and we set up an appointment to go donate the plasma directly to that man. But unfortunately before the man got the plasma for my donation, he didn't make it. There's a 36 hour time frame to wait from when I donate it to when he gets it and in those 36 hours he passed away so then it went to other people because each donation can go to two to four people. At that time, you could do it that way where it was direct. But, I don't think in New York they're doing that anymore. Direct donations have mostly died out. Since then we've donated generally to whoever it goes to. So,our first donations were both direct and then our second ones were both just general.
And we're also trying to do studies. They do research on our blood. We had someone come to our house after they sent us these kits to take 20 tubes of blood for research.Hopefully we can help and make a difference.
I honestly, I feel like we're living in a movie right now. It just feels so unreal. We're locked up in our house and can't leave without a mask. We go to the store and there's a line out the door to the end. They're letting one in as one goes out, like you're at a frat party. I don't think that you could compare this to anything. It's just so weird -- like the whole world is on hold.
