Sarah | Seattle -> DC -> Maine
“I feel like during this pandemic I have had all sorts of different experiences, of like driving across country while it started, and then being sick, and being in a city with roommates, now being in the country with no roommates. And just having had a year where I got to travel so much and making plans to see the world, and now the world is shut down, and who knows.
Will I ever be able to eat a croissant in Paris?
”
Sarah and I met in Chicago, members of the same organization and in the same multi-class friend group. We’ve cheered each other on during moves, travels, and grad school ever since. I was deeply thankful to sit down with her and here her story—a wild tale of so many facets of living life during a pandemic, special too through her lens as someone who holds a Masters in Public Health. Here is Sarah’s story:
I feel like the whole journey starts pre-covid, almost a year before [...] I finished grad school in May 2019. I got offered a job in Seattle, and I had gone to school in D.C. [...] So I packed up my car full of my stuff, and I solo road tripped across the country, and it was one of the coolest weeks of my life. I had never been further west of Chicago.
“I was out there for about eight-months [...] drove back the second week of March, and there had been rumblings of this thing called ‘covid’ happening. But even with my Masters in Public Health, I thought ‘its just the flu, people are being so dramatic.’ [...] There were a couple cases in Seattle at that time, but it hadn’t really spread yet, so nothing was shut down.
Lauren and I road tripped back, didn’t really have any complications in getting back. Got back to D.C. on a Tuesday, the 12 maybe of March, and was in the office Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday—then we had an all staff meeting on Friday saying we are no closed indefinitely because of the pandemic, everyone is work from home. And I remember just sitting there like, ‘What the heck? I just drove all the way back to work out of this office!’
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This was kind of the first time that I actually got to do it (travel) and got paid for work to do it. And I had more disposable income, so I could afford to go on some of these vacations. So I finally get back to D.C. and that’s when the pandemic starts.
“Everyone was trying to adjust to working from home, for me I didn’t really have a room [...] that was a weird kind of adjustment.
About a week and half into that I got a fever. One afternoon I felt really not well, and nauseous and a low grade fever. But I don’t get fevers when I get sick ever, so I was like ‘oh no.’ And I ended up—the problem is I never got tested for COVID. I had all the symptoms of COVID, like the chest tightness, shortness of breathe, fever, really tired, when I would stand up I was wheezing—all the symptoms at the time. Because I had just come back to D.C., my D.C. health insurance had not kicked in yet—So I didn’t have a primary care doctor in D.C. and at that point it was so early in the pandemic, the only way you could get a COVID test was through a referral from your primary care doctor. Which I did not have.
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“‘Well I’m not dying so I don’t need to go take a test from someone who actually needs it.’ Which like, I think back on that of being in this basement room, like not being able to stand up because i was light headed because I couldn’t get a deep breath in and like thinking, ‘I’m not that sick. It’s okay, I’ll save the test for someone who actually is really ill.’ But like, our health care system is so—-even still—ERs and ICUs are overfilled. The public health capacity in this country I think, going into the pandemic people knew the systems were not set up for something like this, and what an illustration to confirm that over this pandemic.
You read the numbers, but it doesn’t actually click until you have a personal experience.
Two weeks passed, I got better. Thankfully no one else in the house got sick. I still don’t know if I had it. The antibody tests have all been negative—who really knows.
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“I keep thinking, eight months is a long time, but it’s also not in the grand scheme of things. And how quickly we as a world have kind of rewritten how societies work and how the manners or social cues have totally changed. I find it really interesting and sad.
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“I ended up getting a different job, the one I had the contract ended and the organization had a hiring freeze. I feel so lucky to have gotten another job in the middle of an economic crisis and pandemic. I had to move up to Maine for that. Trying to onboard virtually during a pandemic, finding an apartment online [...] trying to physically move and travel during a pandemic. Is it safe to stay in a hotel? [...] If you didn’t make any stops it would have been ten hours.
Being up here in Maine, Maine is doing quite well in terms of the pandemic and cases. People are so much more spread out up here. That part has been kind of nice. Being in D.C. I was getting antsy. Cities are a hard place to be in during a pandemic. [...] but I know no one. I feel like it’s going to be a really interesting lonely winter, not really having any friends or community up here, but not having any way to get one.
I spend all day on the computer, the last thing I want to do is have another virtual hang out.
The holidays are coming up, I am not going home for thanksgiving. I hope I can go home for Christmas. But, who knows? While D.C. was a stressful place to live during COVID, I was living with some of my best friends. Now I have traded that for all this space, but no friends.
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Now Sarah braces for the winter months in Maine solo…remind me to check in with her March to see what hobbies she started :)
“Hopefully explore Maine, as much as I can, in the middle of winter!
This pandemic has taught me, I don’t have hobbies. I think it is because I was in school for such a long time. [...] Maybe I will discover a new hobby, somehow!
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Photos: Pre-covid graduation and travel and home in Maine photos are the property of Sarah Fisher.
Cover Photo: “D.C. “ By Emily Creek
