Blog 3: The Environment and Me

This week's discussion pertains to how the environment has affected me or those close to me. The environmental factor I want to discuss today is Covid-19 and the effect it left on my family and me. My family and I are so thankful that we didn't lose any family members, but we did lose some who were close to us. On top of this, both of my parents are in the medical field. Both of my parents work in hospitals in NYC. When covid-19 hit, NYC was hit extremely hard, the death rate skyrocketed, and the state went on shut down basically overnight. This was not only frightening for me, but I was especially scared for my parents. While everyone was safe at home on lock down, my parents had to show up to work and even cover countless overtime shifts because there was no help, everyone was sick. My dad worked constant overtime hours in the emergency room taking care of dying covid patients, and my mom woke up each day with a different job, whether it be at a testing center or taking care of the patients in CCU and ICU to name a few. Although they have seen quite a bit from their occupations over the years, there was nothing like the experiences they had in NYC when covid was running ramped. For quite a while, they didn't come home with any good news; the best news they ever had was if the number of patients who died from covid that day decreased. 

For me, this was already frightening and depressing to hear about and see my parents go through. While they were working overtime in the hospitals caring for covid patients, I was at home taking care of my family members who couldn't leave the house due to immunocompromises. The family members I was taking care of couldn't get covid because if they did there was a high chance, they wouldn't live through it. This alone was frightening, especially when we lost a few people close to us to covid. Both of my parents eventually did contract the illness, my dad got it twice and my mom three times only in the span of a few months. Since they were working so close with patients with the illness, they were bound to get sick, which didn't help our family situation either. Therefore, I did all of the grocery shopping, etc. that required going out into public. The grocery stores had no food for a while. So much so that one day I went to Costco and all I left with was a container of bread because there was no food. For months there were limits on most foods, which led to fights breaking out in the stores. There were barely any essential household items such as toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and many baby and pet foods because the truck drivers who were supposed to deliver to the stores either were sick or didn't want to come into NY due to the extremely high infection rate.

On top of this, covid-19 prevented me from finishing my senior year in high school, caused me to not have a graduation, and miss many events such as football games, prom, and many other "fun" days that our school typically has planned for the seniors. Although I was very sad about missing these, I was just glad when the country began to see light at the end of the tunnel and within a year returned to somewhat normalcy. Most importantly, I was thankful that my family remained safe and healthy, as I know many others were not so lucky and my heart goes out to those who lost family members.

I know this may sound like I am overreacting, but Covid-19 was a truly scary thing for me and my family to go through. At the bottom of this blog, I attached a picture I took at Costco because it was almost hard to believe that a major store had barely any food.