Inside Penn State senior Alex Hatfield’s experience with the coronavirus
Following a winter break vacation in New Hampshire with her family, senior meteorology major Alex Hatfield was planning to return to Penn State in a few days, but woke up one day feeling sick.
She first experienced a mild cough and nasal congestion, symptoms she described as typical of an allergy, but still she was concerned about potentially having the coronavirus.
Hatfield, 21, decided to take a rapid test, which came back negative. As her symptoms persisted, Hatfield’s mother, who is a nurse, convinced her to take the more accurate PCR test, of which the result was positive.
Thus, Hatfield became one of over 27 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States.
Hatfield has asthma and she considers herself lucky to have avoided a serious case of the illness that has killed nearly 500,000 Americans.
“The only thing that happened to me was that I lost my sense of taste and smell,” she said. “And that was really it like I was congested and sometimes like my nose kind of hurt because I was so congested, and I lost my sense of taste and smell for like four days.”
Hatfield was relieved to have avoided a serious case of the coronavirus since she has asthma, which the CDC lists as a potential risk factor for a severe infection.
“I’m really lucky that I got a mild case,” she said. “I was really expecting it to be worse, but it ended up being fine.”
Hatfield believes she contracted the coronavirus from eating at restaurants during her trip. She also suspects her mild case was likely caused by a low viral load.
“I ended up going back to check the COVID cases in the area, and it was having a spike in cases, so I was like ‘oh, this makes sense,’” she said.
Hatfield’s quarantine activities mostly included watching “Criminal Minds,” coloring, and sleeping, which eventually bored her and caused a severe lack of motivation.
“I’m the kind of person who really likes to get out and do something at least like once a day, so it was really hard for me to just sit in bed and do absolutely nothing,” she said.
Hatfield recounted feeling anxious about the potential for her mild symptoms to worsen.
“I just did not know what was going to happen and I felt like it was that loss of control, that really pushed my anxiety over an edge,” she said. “There were multiple times that I was on the verge of like panic attacks and I had to call my roommate or my boyfriend and be like, ‘can you please calm me down?’”
While she was in quarantine for 10 days, Hatfield frequently made facetime calls with her roommate at Penn State, Allie Bausinger.
“We talk all the time anyway, but I made sure to be there for her as much as I could,” Bausinger said. “I tried to keep her mind off of being sick and tried to keep her excited about all of the things we could do when we got back to state college.”
Hatfield equally spent time talking to her boyfriend Ethan Rodgers.
“I always tried to help calm her down if she was anxious about having COVID,” Rodgers said. “I tried to provide encouragement through reassurance that her case was mild and she would be okay.”
When her quarantine was over, Hatfield felt relieved.
“I was like ‘Oh thank God I made it through,’” she said.
Ever since, she has been monitoring herself for any symptoms of long-term health effects from the virus.
Before contracting the virus, Hatfield had taken the pandemic very seriously and followed guidelines to help slow the spread.
“I literally did not leave my house until the day that school ended, like the last day of finals,” she said. “And then I saw my friends like a total of two times over break.”
While she was surprised to have contracted the coronavirus herself, Hatfield’s experience has not altered her approach to living during the pandemic, as she continues to adhere to mask-wearing and social distancing guidelines.
“It has changed my perspective in that it’s easy to get, but it didn’t because I’m not being any more or less safe than I was,” she concluded.
