This was the second July 4th that our family was struck by COVID.  Dallin (and many of his coworkers) tested positive for the illness on June 29; by July 2, Beckham was at the pediatrician's office with a 104 fever and inability to keep anything down. I became sick a day later and thought that we were all getting better after a short stint, but we had to take Beckham in again to get a steroid shot for croup on July 6; meanwhile, I was diagnosed with bronchitis (but tested negative for COVID and the flu) on July 8.   The Urness family was in town all week for July 4 festivities including the Stadium of Fire, but we missed everything. Instead, on July 4 Beckham went to bed an hour early and Dallin and I watched fireworks from our bedroom window. The only upside of this whole ordeal is Beckham's squeaky voice from being sick is so cute and funny.

 

On April 19, 2021, after already receiving four rejections from other hospitals, I was very fortunate to get an email from the head of my grad program informing me that she'd found someone to take me on, despite me not applying there.  So it was that I got the spectacular news that I would be an extern at Neilsen Rehabilitation Hospital just two hours before my house burned down! What a day. 

The past ten weeks I have been very busy learning how to be a speech pathologist in the medical setting.  The speech therapists there are divided into four teams: stroke, TBI, spinal cord injury, and poly-trauma. I was on the poly-trauma team, so I worked with a lot of people who suffered from craniotomies, injuries not just specific to head or spinal cord, critical illness myopathy, and "Long COVID"(being so severely impacted by COVID that there usually required being trached). If I understood correctly, the Long COVID patients were those whose overall physical and cognitive function declined due to the virus attacking their whole neurological system. While at the rehab hospital, they worked on regaining use of their limbs (the severity depended on the person), their swallow, and learning strategies to compensate for executive functioning deficits such as decreased memory, attention, problem-solving, and reasoning. So far research is seeing that cognitive function can take 18 months or so to resolve. 

I worked a lot with dysphagia, which meant a lot of swallow rehabilitation. I taught swallow exercises and used AmpCare, in which small electrodes are placed on the neck to pull the muscles up and forward to provide resistance while the patient swallows. I monitored and modified patient diet textures to maximize safety. I helped with FEES (in which an endoscope is threaded through the nose to get an aerial view of the larynx and watch if a patient is protecting the airway while eating green-dyed foods) and administered MBS (in which the patients eat/drink barium of different textures to watch the safety/efficiency of the swallow on an X-ray).  I loved being able to see patients upgrade from NPO diets (all food via feeding tube) to an oral diet, or from a modified oral diet (e.g. pureed, minced, chopped, soft, etc.) to more regular textures.  

I also worked on cognitive skills, and though I didn't work with it a lot directly, I loved seeing aphasia treatment. To see people with Broca's or Wernicke's Aphasia go from an inability to communicate their needs to having so much more control of the words in their mouth was incredible!  

At the rehab hospital, patients worked hard so they could go back home.  It was a powerful experience indeed to see people who suffered such severe illness or injuries who were able to overcome so much.  

I tried barium. It was nasty.

My supervisor did an endoscopy on me so I could know what it felt like and so I could see my own vocal folds. Apparently I have a very sensitive pharynx because I was coughing, gagging, sneezing and sputtering.

 

It's been over a year since I first heard about the infamous coronavirus. In a few weeks it will be the anniversary of the day I found out my college education was going online, my graduation was cancelled, and church gatherings were going to be limited. This was less than 24 hours before my BYU grad school interview, and needless to say I was NOT in the proper state of mind for that interview, and I did NOT do well. There were people that I sat next to in class that I never saw in person ever again. I mean, we knew that was coming--we were graduating at the end of April, but when the pandemic shut things down we never had the change to say goodbye. 

It's been almost a year.  At the time, with so much fear and uncertainty, I was at peace with giving up my social life for the sake of the greater good. But now...I am so lonely. A year is a long time to go to be by yourself most of the time. One plus side of the pandemic is that my husband and I are both at home almost 24/7, and it's been a blessing to be around him so much. But he has a lot of responsibilities on his computer -- working not quite full time for an online startup company while also being a full-time student in his last semester. So really, I'm alone most of the time. It's not like my days pre-Covid when my friends and I would sit together in class, walk together between class, and meet up together to study or hang out after class and over the weekends. Now, everything is over video chat. Occasionally our professors will have "break-out rooms" where groups of 2-5 classmates can discuss some study questions, and my cohort frequently texts each other in a group chat. But it's not the same as real live human interaction. I haven't had the opportunity to make good friends at my new school like I did at BYU. I meet up with my cousin and with other friends here and there, but it's so different now that seeing people outside of my household is considered an anomaly. 

I guess I had just hoped that being vaccinated would change things somehow. But even though I got vaccinated, nothing has changed.  My school is 100% online, you can't go anywhere without a mask, and everyone is still being asked to "stay 6 feet apart"and otherwise socially distance. 

I shouldn't complain, because I am healthy. I got Covid and I recovered. My loved ones have been safe.  But I think I am allowed to say that I am lonely, and I am sad. 

 

 Ah, 2020 life.  When a pandemic shuts down everything including your school and your social life (which were one in the same thing before last March when everything originally went to crap), there isn't much to write about because, well, you don't leave your house. It's the ultimate pajama life. It's the life where you make sure your mic is on mute so you can step a few feet away from your Zoom class to shake your husband awake because it's 8:58 and he has his daily work meeting at 9 AM at his computer. Poor Dallin. With online work AND online school, he is usually on his computer from 9 AM until 2 AM -- sometimes as late as 4 AM! 

So, for anyone reading this in the future, what's new with the pandemic as of December 9, 2020?

• so I guess there's a vaccine now! It will go to healthcare workers before it goes to the public, but they say that even then none of the social distancing guidelines will change.
• the countries of my mission went under second lockdown. The German Christmas market in SLC got cancelled and I am VERY sad about it. I can't believe I once thought that we would be able to reschedule our cancelled May Europe trip for this month.
• we had a two week order in Utah not allowing people to gather outside of their households. Organizations could be fined up to $10,000 for not complying because even with previous mandates there were Halloween parties with thousands of people. Hospitals have been maximum capacity and Utah has been red zone for a while.
• mask mandates are everywhere. it's become WILDLY political and kind of an awkward social thing too {are you a mask wearer or are you not?}. I am 100% fine with wearing a mask especially if it has even a small chance of helping the at-risk population....but other people see it as an infringement on freedom. 
• California's rules are NUTS, on the other hand. From what I've heard/read (fact check me please), the governor has given permission for electricity and water companies to cut people off if they suspect that people aren't following social distancing guidelines. There are extremely strict rules for the holidays, such as not singing above normal voice level (to reduce to risk of saliva droplets spreading), placing 6 feet of space between people who aren't in the same household at the dinner table (only 3 households allowed), no more than 3 hours together, food has to be in disposable containers for individuals to take, and everything has to be outside. To put the three household thing in perspective, my family would not be allowed to meet up because it's my parent's household, me and Dallin, Rachel and Dick, Liv who lives in Hawaii, and Adam who will be living in a different house in Hawaii (5 households).
• my classes will still be online next semester, but I will have one in-person client and I will need to wear full PPE. My supervisor says we will have to figure that out because it's obviously difficult to do speech therapy with a mask on. This semester I have had the opportunity to do teletherapy for a child speech/language client, and it's been a BLAST making online materials to keep therapy fun!

 

Election memes of course:

Back to School

    My graduate began a few weeks ago, first with orientation, then with actual classes. My classes are all held online via Zoom, except for one class that is on campus at the U for 1.5 hours per week. I have a class on aphasia, developmental language disorders, articulation and phonology, language learning disabilities, and clinic class. In addition, I will start observing clinical sessions on Telehealth before before integrated into the lesson plans. My classes are each held once a week in three hour hour blocks, so in order to prevent "Zoom burnout," as people commonly call it, I try to switch up my location. Rather than always staying in my PJs in my office or bedroom, where it's easy to fall asleep, I try to get ready and go to the UVU library for class {since the U is so far}. Since we spend so much time sitting, Dallin and I have started going to the gym too! It's the first time in my life I have bought a gym membership. 

Back to Church

    I hadn't been to church since March, and man was I missing it. I've just been feeling this sort of emptiness in my life, and I knew that was one of the reasons. How often wards attend are up to local leaders, and our particular bishop had announced a few months ago that we would meet once a month. Well, the first month we had family in town and spaced it, the second month I had coronavirus, and the third month we were out of town. So today, not wanting to wait another week, I tugged Dallin out of bed, got dressed in my Sunday best, and walked to the local ward house on the off chance that there was a different ward meeting there at 9. There was! The meeting lasted for 45 minutes with sacrament, a song, a single talk and a closing prayer. Pews were marked so that people would keep distance between each other. Even with the changes, it felt like coming home. I missed church.

Back to a Social Life

     One of the side effects of COVID-19 is isolation. I didn't get to say goodbye to a lot of friends in March after BYU announced, "Sorry folks, no school tomorrow." And then after that, we graduated. Some friends moved to different cities, some to different states. We try to get together, but it gets really difficult! Finally yesterday a few of us were able to arrange a meeting at a local crepe shop. I had already been missing our little posse, but this made it sting worse! None of my friends are attending the U, and now that most of my classes are online PLUS I live so far from the rest of my cohort, I am worried about being isolated from my new classmates.

     Luckily, my high school gals are always down for a cheesy movie night or Sonic shakes. Dick and Rachel are always down for games or our hikes. Pictured at the top of the post in Silver Lake, to be distinguished from Silver Lake Reservoir. 

COVID wiped me out--I slept more of the day than I was awake! The first couple of days there was chest pressure, which evolved into sinus pressure and pain, which finally went away, though the coughing did not.  My asthma or whatever the heck it was that I developed in March 2019 flared up, unsurprisingly, so if I got too stir crazy and tried to walk around my house too much, then it became hard to breathe.  That meant I was watching A LOT of German TV. Since Dallin was also in quarantine, he has started learning German on DuoLingo.
Needless to say, Germany and Austria have been on my mind so much that I couldn't sleep during my second afternoon nap.  All I could think about was the possibility of moving to Europe after I finish my clinical fellowship year.  We could move there as soon as the beginning of 2023!
So I, being the organizer that I am, made a pretty little Power Point where I could document it all--how to apply for visas, costs of living, etc. Dallin even found a job he hopes to apply for!
People ask, "Where do you want to live after college?" Honestly, there is nowhere in the United States that has as much of a draw for me as Germany or Austria. I was so in love with it, and I've been obsessed with it since I came home in 2017.  So why not make it happen?

 I am officially out of quarantine. We deduced that, since my symptoms of coronavirus started on the evening of July 4, I actually became contagious on July 2. I was tested and began quarantine on July 5, and I remained in quarantine until the morning of the 23rd. What a long couple of weeks! The first few days I felt pretty ill, but then after that it was the spring break that I never got at BYU {haha}! That time consisted of sleeping A LOT, watching Netflix, ordering food online, writing my novel, starting ANOTHER novel of a totally different genre, reading a lot of books, painting, and sitting out on my lawn while Arlo climbed our tree.
The first thing I wanted to do when I was released was to go outdoors! Dallin and I found a very secluded path down the canyon and enjoyed an evening in the woods.
Now enjoy some very non-cute pictures of me with my very cute cat.

I officially tested positive for COVID-19.  The worst thing about having corona is not the sickness or the fact that I am stuck at home for 10 days....It's the guilt of knowing all the people I may have exposed.  Apparently I was contagious two days before I started showing symptoms, which sucks, because it meant that I had absolutely no idea I was putting people at risk until it was too late.  I have no idea who I got it from, so it's not like I knew that I had been exposed. Anyone who I was in contact with is supposed to go into quarantine for 14 days after their last day of exposure to me.
I'm just grateful I have a healthy immune system to get me through this.

   
     July 4th was a tough day at work, and with all the hormones, I had been a basket case the entire week. Honestly, I could have done nothing for the holiday, and I told Dallin that he was welcome to catch a flight to Arizona so he could go home a little earlier than planned and celebrate with family.
    "Katie, if I leave you alone on a holiday, then you'll spend the entire night in bed depressed."
     True.
     So Dallin called his pilot stepdad Jim to get him a standby reservation, and I used my voucher from my cancelled Europe trip to buy a somewhat expensive ticket for the very next day to Arizona. We had procrastinated buying tickets for a month because we wanted to make sure I could get work off, and because Coronavirus had flared up across the country. We were originally supposed to go to California with family, but it had cracked down hard with regulations.
    As I was driving home from work, I called Rachel and her new fiancé Dick to finalize July 4th plans.  I started coughing.  They came over to barbecue and try my homemade macaroons, we watched a gory Tarantino film (never again!), and we loaded up an air mattress with blankets and pillows in the bed of the truck. Dallin teased me for always running into a different room to cough, but I joked, "What if it's corona?" We drove around for an hour trying to find any place that wasn't squished like sardines in a can, and finally we found an ice rink parking lot with just a few families and some college kids who were making out. Then we snuggled up and watched the fireworks.
    Honestly, I had a raging headache, and I had to cuddle really deep into Dallin's chest to make sure nobody saw the silent tears rolling uncontrollably down my cheeks. Stupid hormones! Or was it that my antidepressant dosage was too low? Why do I always get sad on holidays? The kids I work with have been through hell and back, and I on the other hand REALLY have NO reason to be crying.  But it was way past my bedtime anyway, and I had picked up a shift at work before my flight tomorrow.
    At 3:30 in the morning, I woke up with the headache and coughing even worse, among other symptoms. I took my temperature and started bawling once again. 101.5. I sent a picture of the thermometer to my manager apologizing that I couldn't come into work in the morning, and then I shook Dallin awake.
    "I can't go home! I tried to get work off for a month and now I can't fly home!" That's another thing about living during a pandemic.  Airlines are taking every precaution.  Flights are only 50% capacity, passengers must wear masks at all times, and they won't admit sickies.
    "Katie, Katie! You're panicking! You need to breathe!" Dallin said. "This is out of your control, so take some ibuprofen and go back to sleep!"
     Contrary to Dallin's wishes, I was up for the next two hours panicking/feeling sick.  Finally at 5:30 I fell asleep, and then my cat jumped in bed and started to attack my feet. Arlo, I swear.
     In the morning I called around to try to figure out about getting tested.  A nurse on one hotline told me to go to the ER because of the chest pain and somewhat abnormal breathing, though I wondered if I had unintentionally exaggerated my symptoms to her, so I decided not to go. My symptoms were feeling like something was sitting on/stuck in my chest without having the ability to cough anything up, aches, alternating chills and sweating, nausea, and tired breathing. I drove myself to a drive through testing center, had a rod shoved up my nose while I remained in my car (OUCH!), and then I couldn't even make it out of the parking lot. I had to lay down in the back seat. I tried to get back in the front seat, but I had to lay down in the back again before I could even get out of park.  I tried a third time, this time making it to the first stop light before I began to feel super light headed.  I said some bad words as I begged the longest red light of my life to turn green.  I was worried I would lose consciousness before I could make it to a parking lot! At last it turned green, and I turned crookedly into a parking spot at a gas station and laid down so the blood could come back to my head. In the mirror, I was pale, and I was super dehydrated but knew I should not enter the store to buy water if I possibly had corona. I called Dallin and our roommate Reed to come pick me up and bring water. As we returned home, I kept having to sit down in the driveway because I was lightheaded.  Dallin carried me to the couch and made me noodle soup. I had a 104 fever, though I'm not entirely certain my thermometer isn't broken.
     Oh, fun fact about the pandemic of 2020. There is no cure.  So even if I did go to the emergency room, all they could do is assist with any breathing difficulties and try to reduce the fever.  Worst of the worst case scenario, they would use a ventilator.
    Dallin and I watched the 2.5 hour Hamilton musical on Disney+, and I took more ibuprofen and downed 72oz of fluids.  My fever reduced, the pain finally eased, and I started feeling much better. We will be stuck at home until my test results come back.  We cancelled our AZ trip (thank goodness we got a full refund on my ticket). If I test positive, it will be 14-day self isolation.

   

     A few days ago, a black man named George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis after a white police officer kneeled on his neck for eight minutes. Despite pleading "I can't breathe," and bystanders trying to intervene after he stopped responding, the officer would not release the restraint. Floyd's crime? A counterfeit $20 bill.
     Now, the entire world has erupted in angry response.  First, it was peaceful protests, but then it evolved into violent riots that forced the National Guard to get involved.  In Minneapolis, five-story buildings burned. In SLC, a cop car was flipped over and burned and a man with a bow was shooting arrows in the open before other people knocked him over with their skateboards.  Targets nationwide closed their doors after a looting, and countless other businesses--big and small--have suffered smashed windows, theft and other devastation.  My dad's friend is sleeping in his dental office because the business next door was vandalized. In Washington D.C., fifty Secret Service agents were injured in riots that sent President Trump to his bunker, flags were desecrated, and St. John's church was reduced to ashes. People have rammed their cars into police officers, putting one in critical condition, and in another city a journalist went blind in one eye from a rubber bullet fired by officers trying to control the crowds. Many cities and even whole states, including Arizona, have issued 8:00 curfews.
     Last night the Orem PD sent out this message:

Dallin as the Grim Reaper, like in a lot of medieval Black Death art.

Five of Cooper's friends surprised him for his 21st birthday, showing up at 6 AM after having driven all night from AZ.  Thus for the weekend, it was me and eight dudes.  They had a ball, and after we did a sacrament meeting in my living room and created an entire choir of basses, tenors, and my soprano voice, I realized that I will really miss at-home church!