Tiffany

PHOTOGRAPHED BY MORGANA WINGARD

HARLEM, NEW YORK: I can only assume that I may have contracted the virus in the Wall Street area where I work or on the train. I first started hearing about it in the news, but wasn't a part of my everyday life. So for me, it was something that I initially was minimizing. 

Around the first week of March I started not feeling like myself. I typically don't get sick. The only thing that I deal with are seasonal allergies. Because of the weather changing so drastically, I just thought that with spring on the horizon, my allergies were starting to kick in. So, I was self medicating for allergies. Unfortunately, it was not working and I was aggressively getting worse. Initially it started out with a lot of sinus pressure but then it started to change. One thing about COVID 19 is that the symptoms don't necessarily come all at the same time. They're in waves. Aside from sinus pressure, aside from loss of taste and loss of smell, I was beginning to lose my appetite. I was feeling very weak, very fatigued. I was coughing, which was not a symptom that I had of allergies before. I was starting to feel pressure on my chest and shortness of breath. The day that I had a fever that I knew something was wrong. I still functioned in the everyday duties and capacity in which I would want me to. I went to work. I went to church. I went to the gym. I went shopping. But, I was noticing my body was not taking to the allergy medications as it normally would. And by the second week of March, my fever is what made me go to the emergency room.

 It started the night before. Like I mentioned before, the symptoms with covert, at least for me, they fluctuated. that night when I got on the train was when things drastically changed. I went, I was freezing, I was freezing, riding the subway, but I was sweating like I had been running a marathon and I knew then, okay, something is not right. I went to class, dropped off a paper. The professor permitted me to leave, and when I arrived home, I took my temperature and my temperature was over a hundred like one Oh two I believe. And so I took a picture of it actually just to send my supervisor to make her aware of what was going on.  I still did not think that it was COVID 19. I was presuming that these allergies have now turned into a sinus infection. And of course, if you have a sinus infection, you would need antibiotics to treat it and it may ensue a fever. So I still did not think that it was the Coronavirus.

 The morning of the 11th I went to Mount Sinai hospital where I typically go if I'm not feeling well. I went to the emergency room and I began to explain to them what my symptoms were and how I was feeling for about eight days or nine days prior. they tested me for influenza and they tested me for Coronavirus. They said they needed to rule out that it wasn't the flu and wait a while for results. I did. So when I went to the emergency room, they did not keep me overnight. they sent me home with a note for my job to permit me to stay home until both of those tests themselves had come back. 

I didn't think it was Coronavirus, so I was just waiting to hear, it's not Coronavirus, it's not influenza. It's a sinus infection. I was ruling out influenza because I had taken the flu shot previously and I always take the flu shot every year. For me, the wait, the waiting process was this is going to be a sinus infection and I'm going to get antibiotics and I'm going to be okay. And so there wasn't, in all honesty, a lot of worry while I was waiting, I just knew that I was not feeling well and I needed a doctor to tell me what was wrong.

They reached out to me, told me that it wasn't the flu, and then I wind up hearing from them, maybe like on the fourth or fifth day that it was in fact Coronavirus and that I was highly contagious and I needed to self quarantine. I needed to isolate myself, to not get on New York City public transportation, and to try to minimize my contact with anyone.

Once I found out that in fact it was Coronavirus, that's when I hit an emotional wall.

My first thoughts were: could I have given this to someone? I work with people who are older than me. I attend school with people who are older than me. Some of my friends are seniors to me. And so my first initial thought was, could I have possibly given this to someone?  Could my children also have Coronavirus?  

I still had a fever. I was having shortness of breath. You know, I could not breath. I, it was hard to even speak without, you know, my breaths being short. And at that point I knew that this virus was something that doctors and researchers did not have a lot of information about. that, people were in fact not making it. How did I get this? I have a clean bill of health. This particular virus is not, it's no respecter of person or age or, or you know, lifestyle. there was no vaccination, there is no vaccination, there was no prescription that I left Mount Sinai with, so what do I do? What do I, how do I mentally cope and how do I physically try to fight off something that no one has an answer for? And so for me, it became really emotional.

I remember being on my bathroom floor crying and praying and saying to God, “There is no antidote. There is no remedy. There is no prescription. So, You are going to have to heal me because if something happens to me, what happens to my children? I can't not survive this. You're going to have to be the solution.” 

For me, it was a matter of me gathering everything that I believed, biblically, being a Christian and holding onto the fact that I believe this to be true. I believe that Jesus Christ is a healer. I believe that even though I'm going through Covid-19, just as well as someone else, that I'm going to survive this. That mentally, I have to fight. That although my human emotions are real, my tears are real, my devastation is real, not knowing what tomorrow may bring is real, I cannot allow fear to supersede my faith. And, that was all that I had to hold onto.

I had to talk this thing out in prayer to God. and so that's what I did. And I could not allow fear to grip me to the point where I didn't have any help. And that Saturday night when I was on my bathroom floor, crying and praying, it felt like I was almost at that point--that fear was beginning to take away my hope. Fear was beginning to take away what I believe. Why? Because I'm on the floor. I'm having shortness of breath, I'm crying. My fever is not going anywhere. The reality of all the symptoms were there. So, fear of course did grip me, but I could not allow it to overtake me. I wouldn't. I wouldn't.

Tiffany lives with her two sons in Harlem and works for New York City’s Department of Homeless Services.