So I Had to Go Into Quarantine for an Eye Infection

This pandemic has been going on for an annoying amount of time, and for nearly a year, there was zero suspicion that I had gotten COVID-19. I just got my second dose of the COVID vaccine and spent a day aching all over, having a fever, and just generally feeling out of it. This is the second time in a month that I had to spend pretty much the entire day in my room. The first was a few weeks ago.

My eyes get really itchy when it gets to be allergy season, and that means I rub my eyes a lot. On the night of Sunday the 4th, I had this really annoying sensation in my eye, like I had an eyelash I couldn't remove. I spent all evening trying to get this eyelash out, spending several minutes in front of the mirror trying to remove it and missing out on perfectly good Star Trek: Voyager viewing time. I noticed that my eye was turning bright red. As you can see, I caught my infected eye on camera. It was not pretty. I couldn't get the eyelash, so I went to bed thinking it would go away.

I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and noticed that my eye was still red and a little swollen. This wasn't just going to go away. I called Health Services the next morning to get it looked at. As it turns out, eye redness is one of the myriad symptoms of COVID-19, so they sent me to the COVID team to get tested. That meant being placed into temporary isolation until I got my results back.

I had an appointment with the school physician, and she said it was most likely just pinkeye since I had no other symptoms. I was still stuck in my room, though.

I was signed up for the meal delivery service since I couldn't go to Mabee Dining Hall for food. I wouldn't say I hated it, but it definitely wasn't what I would have picked. I was given multiple options for each meal: at lunch, for example, I was given a couple chicken breasts with vegetables, a cup of pasta, a salad, and a fruit cup. For lunch, I ate one of the chicken breasts and the potatoes from my serving of vegetables as well as some chocolate pudding for dessert, and I kept the pasta as leftovers.

At dinner, I got some pasta with chicken in it as well as some more vegetables and another salad and fruit cup. I also got what appeared to be a sugar cookie with frosting on it. That is, until I unwrapped it and smelled lemon. This was my dessert for tonight, so I ate it anyway. It wasn't bad. It was sweet without being too lemony, but I wouldn't pick it if given a choice.

With my dinner, I also got some breakfast fixins for Tuesday morning, including a banana, a Nutri-Grain bar, some Frosted Flakes, a bottle of milk, and a bottle of orange juice. I decided to eat pasta for breakfast washed down by some milk. Yum! I think it's about time I told you that Monday's breakfast was also pasta, but this pasta had meat sauce.

I had a bunch of food left over, so I put it up for grabs by my hall, but no one claimed it in a week, so I threw it away. Shame.

Here's one of the pictures I sent in the group chat. No, you can't have it.

I was prescribed some eye drops for the infection as well as some generic Claritin. I had to take the eye drops in both eyes every three hours. Most of my Monday was spent sitting around waiting for my prescription to arrive. It didn't arrive until Tuesday when the lockdown was lifted. It was 9:30 when it arrived, which every time I had to take the eye drops awfully close to one of my classes, so I stayed in my room for nearly all of my classes for the next week so I could take them right away.

In the school's "Guide to Temporary Isolation," they recommended that I take a 15 to 20 minute "fresh air break," so I didn't have to spend the whole day inside. I took mine at 8 pm, one of the recommended times. I decided to wander around campus for a bit. The temperature was really nice, and it was a shame I had to spend the day inside. On some of the days that week where I didn't leave the room as much as usual, I went outside and walked the same route. After that walk, I took a quick shower to wash any pollen off that might have gotten on me and make my allergies act up.

My test results came back negative on Tuesday morning, so I wasn't in danger of having COVID anymore, though as I just said, I stayed in a lot that week because of my eye drops. And I just stayed in for most of Sunday (the 25th) because of previously mentioned feeling like crap. I went out for dinner after my fever went down, but one thing's for sure after both of these days: staying inside feeling sick all day is absolutely not fun.