Six Feet Apart... in the Time of Corona

By Holly Kammier and Jessica Therrien

Six Feet Apart is a collection of inspirational essays and poems written by women and
girls from around the globe who share their personal experiences from 2020 to 2022,
during the time of COVID-19. From the sadness of a child in New Jersey adjusting to
distance learning, to the terror of a young adult suffering under military lockdown in
Lima, Peru, to the despair of a sixty-year-old fighting the debilitating illness alone, Six
Feet Apart gives us a rare view through the windows of other people's lives.
Akin to personal diaries, the real-life tragedies and triumphs in these pages capture
loneliness in India, fear and loss across the United States, mental health challenges in
New Zealand, and struggling relationships in far corners of the earth as the world
grapples with a global pandemic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Acorn Publishing
• Release date: Dec 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215695791

Book preview

Holly Kammier

and

Jessica Therrien

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FROM THE TINY ACORN . . .

GROWS THE MIGHTY OAK

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www.AcornPublishingLLC.com

For information, address:

Acorn Publishing, LLC

3943 Irvine Blvd. Ste. 218

Irvine, CA 92602

Six Feet Apart . . . in the Time of Corona

Copyright © 2022 Acorn Publishing LLC

These people have donated their time to this anthology:

Written by contributing authors

Curated by Holly Kammier and Jessica Therrien

Edited by Jan Steele

Cover designed by Damonza

Interior designed, formatted, and line-edited by Debra Cranfield Kennedy

Acorn Publishing is donating 40% of the profits of this anthology to:

Laura’s House to support women and children who are domestic violence survivors.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from the author.

Anti-Piracy Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN-13: 979-8-88528-037-2 (paperback)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Jessica Therrien

1

Anger

Searching for Safe Spaces Amidst a Pandemic

Evelyn Witterhold

11

Big Deal

Jennifer Gasner

15

When Is This Going to End?

Jennifer Gasner

21

Anxiety

Cabin Fever

anonymous

27

Twenty-Four Hours

Shih Yen Chang

33

Diary of My Days During Covid-19

Andie J. Jablon

37

Pregnant in the Time of Corona

Eymi Teves

41

Pregnant in a Pandemic

Dr. Nishtha Mishra

45

Connectedness & Belonging

Worlds Collide in the Time of COVID-19

Simone Berkowitz

53

Pandemic 2020

anonymous

57

Nature’s Solace During the Time of Pandemic

Blessy Christina Boni

59

Nature Poem

Janet Jackson

63

Finding Gold in the Fallout—

A Collection of Diary Entries

Cynthia G. Robertson

65

Where Sterile Meets Sacred: Spiritual Care

Inside Hospital Walls During COVID-19

Joy Frederich

71

Reawakening

Eleykaa Tully

75

Coping

Notes from Quarantine

Claire Bidwell Smith

79

I Am Lucky

Lorin Petrazilka

81

Coronavirus and Me

Juliana Grandi

85

Lockdown

Jessica Corpus Reyes

87

One of the Lucky Ones

Michelle Bolton

89

It Finally Got Us

Farah Hurdle

95

Secure Your Oxygen Mask First

Valentina Angelo

99

Family

The First Punch

Alexa KingAard

105

This One Precious Life

leslie ferguson

109

Chaos Theory

Jackie Kaimer

113

Only You

Saloni Mahendro

117

Covid Hits Our House

STEFANIE CALLISON

123

Hope

My Victory

Fidan Kim

131

Corona Poem

ISABELLE Hay

135

A Tale of Love, Freedom, Hope for the Future, and How Technology Makes All the Difference

Anne-Marie Mc Gee

139

Beauty Quarantine

Gina Thompson

143

The Other Side

Dee Kennedy Campbell

149

A Healthier Future

Sam Ashkenas

153

Hopes and Dreams

Monika Shanmugam

157

A Change of Plans

anonymous

159

Finding Myself During Covid

Shelley Karpaty

163

Loneliness

My Bleeding Words

Soumya Harichandan

169

A New Companion for New Times

Mrinalini Kumar

171

High School Graduate

Katie Paille

173

Coronavirus Is Not a Hoax

Marietta Kelly

177

Miles Away

Evelyn Lawhorn

179

Loss

Confessions of a COVID-19 Bride

Natalie Neece

187

Phantom Fist Bumps

Danielle Beres

191

Living in a Pandemic

Isabella Albertini

195

A Hard Year for Everyone

anonymous

199

Before

Mia Shemer

203

Love

A Virus Called Love

Cherie Kephart

207

The (Not Normally) Rebel Bride

Jessica Gorman

213

Love in the Time of Covid

Jackie Kaimer

217

Weekends

E.E. Snead

221

Rock Bottom

We Meet Again

J.M. Cools

227

Rock Bottom

anonymous

229

Standing Tall

Women Helping Women

Dhwani Jain

235

Covid Lessons

Suzy M. Ryan

239

Vacation Covid Style

S.A. Roell

245

COVID-19: The Most Horrific and Blissful Experience of My Life

Ashley Michael

249

The Mask—2020

Flora Beach Burlingame

255

Silver Lining

Tabassum Kaniz

259

How the Bubble Kept Us Together

Lynn Haraldson

263

Life Under a Sickly Sky

G. Stevens

267

Filling in the Blanks

Sydney Gaw

271

Epilogue

Holly Kammier

277

2

Introduction

JESSICA THERRIEN

When we set out to compile this collection of Covid stories, I never imagined I’d have one of my own. I never imagined I’d be praying we’d make it through . . .

In 2020, I was affected by Covid in the way most were, feeling locked down, nervous, and derailed. But that was everyone’s story. I had nothing to say about it that so many others hadn’t already said in their essays to us.

If I’m being honest, after a year of not knowing anyone who’d even contracted the virus, I became skeptical that it was real. And even if it was, there was a 99.9% survival rate. I was young. I’d be fine.

I was wrong.

By July 2021, there were hardly any cases in our area, I’d had a few friends who’d gotten it, including my pregnant sister who has lupus, and she was just fine. It was nothing more than a bad flu. That being said, why not take a trip? We’d been locked down for so long, and things really were starting to open up. The Great Wolf Lodge near my mother’s house, a quick plane ride away, was the perfect ending to our Covid summer. Covid was over, I was sure.

Things changed for me on August 4, 2021, just three days after we’d returned. My two-year-old came down with a fever. I wasn’t surprised. She’d been locked down for almost her entire life. Of course, she’d get exposed to something. I was next to get the fever, then my eight-year-old, my six-year-old, and finally, my husband.

For the first three to four days, I wasn’t worried. Our fevers were high, but we took ibuprofen and Tylenol to combat them. By day five, I’d developed such an intense sore throat that it was pounding in my ear, and my oldest son had the same thing happen. It dawned on me that we probably had strep throat. I took my son in for a strep test, which was negative, but shortly after, we both developed white lesions on the back wall of our mouths. It had to be strep. On day six or seven, I sent in pictures and got antibiotics for the whole family. Around this time, things start to blur for me. The kids’ fevers broke, and so did mine. For about two days, I felt like I was getting better. My husband, on the other hand, was getting worse. His fever wouldn’t break, he had an unbearable headache, and a cough had developed. By day nine, he was coughing up rust-colored phlegm.

I like to be over-prepared, so early on in the pandemic, I bought a medical-grade pulse oximeter to measure O2 levels. I’d read that oxygen saturation was one of the ways to determine if you should go to the hospital. His reading was 95% at first. Not great, but not an emergency. Over the next 24 hours, it dropped into the high 80s, the numbers ticking down with each hour. I wanted him to go to the hospital that night, but if he could just get a good night’s sleep . . .

We were both up all night. His headache had become agonizing and unbearable. By the morning, his O2 was around 85%. Thank God I had that pulse oximeter because it was the only way I was able to convince him to go to the ER. Without that eye-opening reading, he may have fought me.

At the ER, they checked his oxygen, and a swarm of nurses closed in. They whisked him away in a matter of moments, giving us seconds to say goodbye. I was not allowed to be with him at all from the moment he was checked in. Over the phone, I heard the doctors predict his survival rate, giving him a 50/50 chance of making it through.

My husband was in the hospital for two weeks. No visitors allowed. I watched through intermittent video calls as they increased his oxygen and changed out the tube in his nose from the small one to the big blue one. The doctor’s calls were not encouraging.

We’ve done all we can. It’s up to his body now . . . .

But he seems to be doing better. He’s eating. He’s more positive. He got out of bed today . . . .

Unfortunately, his labs are not looking good. He’s at an incredibly high risk for a blood clot.

No matter what positive, hopeful proof I had that he was recovering, the doctors clearly didn’t feel the same way.

We’ve seen people seem to get better only to deteriorate in a matter of days, so . . . .

Every call was a gut check. And as my husband smiled back at me over the video chat, I kept those horrifying reports to myself.

If you know my husband, you know he’s one of the most determined, persistent, strong-willed people you’ll ever meet. He doesn’t give up. Ever. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ve heard him say those words a thousand times . . . . and he always does. But what if this was out of his hands? He’ll tell you nothing is out of your hands.

Over the next several days, he questioned the nurses, trying to find out what he could do. He learned about certain positions (the swim—laying on your belly with one arm up and the other down). He would lay in this uncomfortable position hour after hour after hour. He practiced daily positive affirmations. Sound therapy. He prayed and prayed. Forced himself to eat. To walk. To breathe deeply. He used their lung strengthening thingy as many times a day as he was told. Whatever it takes.

In the end, he made it home.

You’d think that was the end of my story. It’s not.

Covid is a darkness that haunts you long after it’s over.

While my husband was in the hospital, I was fighting my own battle. Much of what I went through is lost. It’s become a thick cloud of pain that I can’t remember clearly. When people ask me how I managed to care for my three young children through all of this, I honestly don’t know the answer. I can’t remember.

For me, Covid began to play a cruel game. After overcoming the acute infection, I had a few days of recovery. But then the next wave hit. Covid went after my digestive system. For some unknown amount of time, a week maybe two, I couldn’t eat. I had complete food aversion, vomiting, nausea, and diarrhea. I remember being curled up on the couch with my mom on speaker phone, truly wondering if I was going to survive. I don’t remember how I eventually came out of that. I remember picking my husband up from the hospital and the tears when we saw each other. I remember the oxygen machine he brought home and the long tube trailing through the house as if he were some 90-year-old man. But he wasn’t. He was fit, forty, healthy, and strong. None of it made sense.

For me, the waves kept coming every few weeks. Food aversion, vomiting, nausea, and diarrhea hit me over and over and over again as the months passed. Just as I’d begin to feel like I was getting better, another wave would come.

I had read about long Covid right after getting sick. Please, I thought. Not me. The doctors said it was normal to have digestive upset but that it shouldn’t last longer than three months. After five months and uncountable ER visits to get fluids for dehydration and a desperate attempt to get answers, I broke down in uncontrollable sobs to my doctor.

Please help me, I begged her. I have three children, and I’m wasting away. I need to get better for them. I was already thin, 5'10" and 135lbs, when I got sick. At the five-month mark, I had lost 15lbs, and I was scared.

My doctor stared back at me with wide, empty eyes. All the medicines she’d tried had made me worse. She had no answers for me.

Over the next few months, I had countless strange things happen. I lost strength in my right leg, experienced crippling physical anxiety that woke me out of sleep every morning promptly at 5am, developed insomnia, tingling and burning in my feet, developed iron deficiency, brain fog/trouble concentrating, memory issues, and low blood pressure. I had CT scans, an ultrasound of my gallbladder, and endoscopy and colonoscopy, but nothing that provided any answers.

Today marks an entire year since we contracted Delta. I am still not myself. After a reinfection with Omicron in May of 2022 and a dose of Paxlovid, my smell did return, but that was after nearly a year. My taste is still gone, but that could be due to my latest issue, burning mouth syndrome, where I feel like my tongue has hot sauce on it, and I can’t get it off. That started in April 2022.

Before Covid, I was a bright, energetic, happy, driven mother. Today, I am doing my best to get back to that person while the little monster in my body moves around, breaking things. It’s definitely been a journey, but I wouldn’t trade my experience for another because there are so many who weren’t as lucky as I was. I got to keep my husband, and I thank God for that gift every single day.

Six Feet Apart . . . In the Time of Corona —

(

Anger

)

2

Searching for Safe Spaces Amidst a Pandemic

EVELYN WITTERHOLT

Denver, Colorado

Age: 22

April 17, 2020

The CEO of the grocery store company I work for recently sent out a letter that began with a 64-word paragraph where they thanked us for all our hard work during this pandemic. The next 468 words of this letter addressed the recent complaints against them and the emergence of a union. The CEO basically conde­scended to us for wanting to unionize by explaining how good we already have it with our decent pay and chances for promotion. But during a pandemic, decent pay doesn’t cut it when you fear for your life every time you clock in. And a chance for promotion doesn’t ease the constant anxiety we feel that carries on long after we have clocked out.

This letter I received is indicative of how it feels as though this company only kind of cares about us. Aside from this antiunion letter I received, we also received