Thank you to all of the participants who have shared their stories with us. Each week, we will feature a few short stories that highlight what some of our participants have been experiencing that week. If you are a Michigan resident and not yet a participant, we would love to hear from you too. You can sign up through our main project web page or directly through the Google Form here.

Week of May 3rd

I'm an owner-operator of a Veterinary Clinic here. I am considered an essential worker, so I'm still going to work every day. But, at the clinic we're only allowed to do sick animals or chronically ill, injured. Nothing that's routine. And we're doing everything curbside off, so clients stay outside the building, we get a history on the phone. Then we go out and get the animal, with the mask on and the people are supposed to be wearing a mask. And then we bring animals into the clinic, do whatever we need to do, and then I talk to them on the phone again, and we take them back out. It's very inefficient and a little cumbersome. So we're actually working a fair number of hours, but doing about half the amount of work that we typically do. But it's getting a little bit easier every week.

I feel like as the owner, it's my place to to look calm and like everything's under control and like we're all going to be fine and try to be the cheerleader, but it was particularly difficult. I wasn't sleeping very well at night and just getting different headaches at the beginning but it's hard to stay in crisis mode for a long time. So as each week has gone by and this is starting to feel a little more, the phrase is "The new normal". We're getting more comfortable with it.

I'm almost to the point now where I think even if the governor were to say things can open back up again, I would be reluctant to do that. I think we'll probably let other people try that first and then stay with the curbside telemedicine and sick things only, for a little bit longer and just see how it goes.

Have you or anyone close to you had to change or cancel any big plans because of this?

I'm going to say that's a real big Yes. I proposed to my then-girlfriend, now-fiancee last March and our wedding date we decided on was May 9th. So clearly some changes were in order there.

When things first started to lock down around mid-March, we had a discussion at the time and we -- we rolled it over for a few days and talked about it. The idea of what we might do what we might need to postpone or change or cancel whether we wanted to to limit the number of people, or what might be the best way. And as things kept progressing and getting worse that we we came to the decision that rather than try to keep crunching down our plans smaller and smaller and end up with something that was really half-baked or or not even, you know, not not even worth doing at all.

We just decided that we were going to do two things. The first of them was keep the same wedding date. All of the associated, you know, the friends the family the party all of that is all secondary to the actual purpose of the day, which is being married you know, joining ourselves together. We're going to have a a church wedding and and you know, if the priest is there and two people are there to sign the marriage license that's that's really the minimum. So rather than cancel. We are delaying our reception to next May. Hopefully knock on wood next May everything's able to happen.

We were able to push everything back to next May. we're going to do up d the whole thing right. Right down to the party bus, you know, my my now fiance and and by then she'll be my wife will be in her wedding dress again. We're going to have all the bridesmaids and groomsmen we push back our our rentals for our tuxes and we'll all be in in the full shebang, the party bus to get pictures taken. We're going to try and get back to the church. Unless someone else is having a wedding that weekend. Try and get back into the church and do some pictures in our full with everyone there in the church that on campus and places like that.

You know my sister was already going to be my best man? We're real close. So she was able to come and they got permission from the the church to bring someone who wasn't immediate family. So she actually has a maid of honor instead of pressing her grandmother into serve in the role. So yeah, we'll be doing that, just a little some some takeout food and and champagne and the church basement and and back home.

You know, it's it's one of those things where it's it's certainly disappointing. It's it's not what any of us wanted for the day, but you can't really say it ruined the day. I mean, you know, as far as the party goes, well, we still intend to have that eventually it's not a lost thing and and it sounds kind of cheesy or trite to say it but the wedding is the -- the marriage is the important thing the actual you know, core of the wedding, not all the extras around it.

We also are able to -- we're going to livestream the ceremony and maybe some things at the small reception. We're going to live stream of those on a Facebook group, which is foreign to us. Because neither of us to kind of people that have to live stream every moment of our lives, but it's the you know, if if people could come we wouldn't be sitting there going "but how will we live stream it for everyone else"", but it's this case where since no one gets to come we're going to go ahead and do that, so the family and the friends and people can can be there and share the day with us.

Week of April 26

I am a third grade school teacher. We're in our 6th week of distance learning for our students. This is not something I was trained to do. They are learning so much about technology and problem-solving. I mean it is, it is so cool to see an email come from a child rather than an adult asking a question about how something has to be done.

I can sense their angst. I can sense their frustration. You know at our last grade level meeting we talked about different standards. Different standards of each subject that need to be covered yet and that we need to record on the report card. But the more I think about it is I really am not too worried about those standards. I really don't care. What's more important to me is those kids, and getting them through the trauma and the uncertainty that comes with this pandemic. So often I'll have a child say "Do I have to do this?" and it's like, no you don't. To me, it's just a blessing to see their faces on the Zoom screen each day. And to see that they're okay.

And I've also found that it's good for them to talk to each other. They don't have a way to do that right now. They can't play with their friends. They're stuck in their house with their family and they just need to talk to their friends, you know.
And when I'm present in Zoom, it doesn't always work so well. So what I'm starting to do now is when I'm finished with what I need to cover, I think guys let's let's break into some breakout rooms and just talk to each other. It is the longest three minutes of my day waiting for them to come back from the break room. And I know that when I joined one of their breakup rooms, they just stop talking because I'm there and they think I need to take over. Even if I tell them I don't. But when they come back from the break out room, they're smiling so beautifully because they've just had a chance to talk to their friends. They can't meet them on the playground. They can't meet them in a classroom, but they can meet them in a Zoom breakout room.

To me the most important thing that I want my kids to remember is who they are and whose they are. I don't really care if they remember addition and subtraction and multiplication and division. I don't care if they don't know the parts of speech. When when fourth grade begins for these guys there are there are going to be pieces to pick up. But I want their brains to be able to work properly. I don't want them to be burned out. I just want them to be able to continue on.

We have *intended* to try to make our own masks, to answer the last question. We even bought a sewing machine on Amazon. But since we haven't been outside -- meaning, haven't been outside in the public -- We've had less of an incentive to try to make our own masks, and other things keep coming up and we keep pushing it off. At this point in time, I've ordered a few months off masks online. One of the companies that I think I mentioned in my last diary, fanatics.com, have partnered with the NBA to make a team branded masks that they now sell. They're supposed to arrive here sometime in mid-May. And I guess remains to be seen whether or not we're going to try to do something before that in terms of making our own masks.

I'd like to, personally. I'd like to be able to share masks with the community, if I'm able to make them. But much like with a lot of the other good intentions that we've had in terms of, you know, me learning python or me learning to play the guitar: being productive personally productive when it's not -- when the (Big Bang Theory fans will recognize this) When the locus of -- this quote -- when the locus of motivation is not external. Sometimes it gets really hard to motivate yourself to do something productive internally. So very long-winded way of answering this question with: No, we have not yet tried to make our own masks. But we have all the materials and sewing machine that hopefully -- it's tiny, it's cheap -- but hopefully is up to the task, if and when we finally get around to it.

Week of April 19

As you probably know that there was that great lockout protest last week that -- or, gridlock protest -- that just crippled the capital. And even though my wife doesn't work for the government, she has nothing to do with the government, they are a private company, they still had people stop in front of their building shouting at them. Even though they're not involved and I just worry they say they're going to do more of these if they're just going to escalate and escalate. With the amount of guns around there. I just -- people -- someone's going to do something stupid, I worry.
[...]
Um. Yeah. To cope. I made a website, kentcovid.com. Just a graph. I like visualizing the data pattern. And I need to -- I want to help by doing something technical like I'm good with computers and I can set you up a production environment in the cloud in a second, but I don't know how to help everyday people with something like this.
So I tried doing that through a website.

Our COVID story started March 10th or so. I had symptoms that I thought were flu symptoms: body aches, extreme headache, dizziness, fever. And I was sick for a couple of days before I went to the ER and my husband drove me there and they brought us to a segregated area of Royal Oak Beaumont because of my symptoms of fever and body aches. And I was given IV fluids and EKG for some cardiac monitoring because I had a lot of dizziness. And I was given swabs for Respiratory panels and then a blood panel to rule out mono. So my respiratory panels ruled out strep and a couple of different strains of flu. My blood panel ruled out mono and other infection. So the doctor there at the ER agreed to give me the covid-19. And after a couple more hours of IV fluids, we were sent home and told for our whole household to go into quarantine, for 14 days at minimum. So we went into quarantine. After a few days, my husband also had symptoms similar to mine. He had a high fever, extreme body aches, fatigue, and extreme headache. He also had a cough at that point. I did not have a cough. His cough got pretty bad.

Long story short on the illness part of it. My swab came back eight days later, and it said it was negative. But our doctor did not believe it was negative. She said to assume that we were positive and remain in quarantine. And we were not able to get tested again that we were told there were not enough test kits.

So during this time of illness when we were quarantined there were several days where my husband and I both felt quite sick, worried for our health because we could not breathe very easily. And so we consulted by phone with my doctor's office and with the COVID hotline at Beaumont, but we were told not to leave our house unless we were in acute respiratory distress, which was described to us as if we were laying down and unable to catch our breath, that would be considered acute respiratory distress. And that would be the only reason that we would be admitted -- not even admitted but allowed in -- to be seen at the hospital and we also could not be seen in any urgent care or at our doctor's office because we had COVID symptoms. So even though I would have liked to have a chest x-ray and probably needed more IV fluids, we had to stay home. So we were told to monitor our symptoms, our fever. And try to find a pulse oximeter so that we could monitor our lung functioning and have more information in case we both are symptoms worsened. So we continued to do that. And in the meantime, we had neighbors and friends dropping food off to our front door. And I eventually developed pneumonia. That was not confirmed by a chest x-ray, confirmed only, or diagnosed only over the phone by the doctor again, because I could not be seen anywhere, because I was not in acute respiratory distress. So I was prescribed antibiotics for pneumonia. Which then developed after about two weeks of pneumonia symptoms, I developed pleurisy which is inflammation of the lungs the lining of the lungs. Which is just painful and causes fatigue, but it clears up on its own. I've had it before so I was not -- it was not a new condition for me, and I thought I knew kind of what to expect.

So we were -- had not left our home in almost four weeks at the end of all of that, and now we still do not have confirmation that we had COVID, although our doctor believes that we both did. Our two children never showed symptoms thankfully, but that was just another reason why they were pretty confident that it was COVID. The doctor felt that if it had been some other type of flu that our children would have probably shown symptoms, but assuming that it's COVID. They were understanding that children -- or, people who are 19 or younger often are asymptomatic. So we are assuming that our children were infected, but were asymptomatic.

So we are waiting now for antibodies testing. And hoping that that becomes available so that we can I guess have proof that we did experience the virus.

Week of April 12

In a way I... I'm glad that it kind of hit me gradually. But I think I was really shocked when I went to Costco and the parking lot was filled, like there was no spot to park. Like you had to wait for a car to back out to get in. And then when I pulled in and got out, there were people and all they had in their carts was toilet paper. And I I was just in shock like what is going on and then I went in the store and there was like maybe two carts available and I looked -- and this is like 15 minutes after the store opened -- and I looked to the back of the, looked to the store and the line to checkout was snaking around the store and I just dropped the cart. You know, just just "I'm out of here this is this is awful." That was that was the first time I realized this is something -- this is bad.

And then on the way home I went to Family Fare thinking, "well, little Family Fare in Zeeland's not gonna be as bad." But when I went to Family Fare, the shelves with all the paper products were completely empty. And I'm like "this looks like a third-world nation" all the -- it was scary. So that's when I realized it was real.

You know it's nice hearing from parents (my students) that every single student just misses school and misses me and misses hanging out with kids -- their classmates. Like there isn't a student that you know out there I think that doesn't want to just get back to school. And I think that's kind of nice to hear. That's kind of nice, you know that school is it's more than just learning your ABCs and one-two-three, like it's -- it takes care of a lot of necessities you know the social-emotional piece and just a lot. And I get to talk to kids and it's fun to interact. You know a lot of them are learning how to do this independently and that's that's kind of cool you know like nine year olds are figuring it out. I think that's, that's hopeful.