During the early hours of the morning after my brother left (around 3-4 a.m.), my pump alarm kept going off. It went off about 3-5 times whenever I was laying on my right side (probably a line occlusion). By the time I actually woke up at 9 a.m. I had seen that my griplock had fallen off (A Velcro piece that goes on top of my dressing so I can coil my tubing around it).

My pump has never gone off in the night before.

I should’ve taken that as a sign as to the craziness that was about to ensue…

I had spent the whole morning of November 26th cleaning the house, doing laundry and showering.

I had the soccer match on and had heard a dripping sound that was louder in the living room than it was in my bedroom. I had remembered I heard this odd sound earlier in the day before I went to shower but couldn’t find where the sound was coming from.

Since I knew something had to be leaking somewhere I began standing on things and putting my ears up to the wall to figure out where it was coming from.

Aha! It was coming from the A/C unit. I opened the panel and noticed a small puddle forming on the hard floor. The drip sound would echo since the unit had some hollowness inside which was making it hard to determine where the sound was coming from.

It was a weekend, so I had called maintenance but wasn’t sure they’d be able to come by.

Luckily, they arrived at around 4 p.m. that day. They had opened up the panel, taken a look up (since that’s where the water was coming from) and sprinted out the door saying they needed to go upstairs to stop the leak.

I didn’t see maintenance again until the following day.

In that interim time, the small dripping sound went into a flowing stream sound where water was pouring out of the vents in my living room and bedroom.

It wasn’t until I saw water pooling by my bedroom door that I noticed my bedroom was flooding as well.

I sprang off the couch and started pulling out everything from under my bed into my closet. I pulled the bed away from the wall since water was getting on the bed (because the vent is above my bed). The water line kept growing so I took early precautions to take everything off the floor in case it reached the back wall by the end of the night. Some of the water had even begun spreading into my closet so I had begun moving things into my bathroom. I had tried to get ahold of maintenance and anyone else but since it was weekend and they had only sent out one person, no one was available.

I had figured the maintenance worker likely had to keep going up floors to fix the problem. Well- I was exactly right. At about 11 p.m. I heard a very loud gushing sound coming from outside my window and saw that the maintenance worker had redirected the leaking water to outside.

However, my apartment had been flooding for seven hours, the damage had already been done.

I decided to spend the night on my couch since my room was all wet and I didn’t want to walk through it.

The following morning, I woke up to see that the water seeped onto my hard floors and my carpet was warped. Maintenance came by and informed me that the leak started 3 floors above me, and I was the only apartment it flooded (it stopped on my floor).

-Wow, I love that luck.

Anyhow, they set me up with a fan that needed to run all day for the next 3 days to dry out the carpet and told me it would take a couple weeks to fix. They mentioned they’d come back to shampoo the carpets but that the hard wood would be damaged, and I needed to contact the leasing office if I wanted it fixed.

On November 28th, I woke up and felt pretty sick (but hey, that’s every day) so I didn’t think much of it. I attended my first class and ran some errands. I then went to the leasing office to have them not charge me in my electric bill for the fan running. I also requested a mold test to be done (since my A/C had the heating unit in a moist environment).

By the time I got home I was feeling very nauseous, and my medications weren’t helping. I had decided to take my temperature and saw I had a 101-degree fever.

Huh-interesting…

I had texted my family group chat mentioning I wasn’t going to attend the other two classes I had that day.

I then found out my mom and dad had both gotten COVID. The runny nose my dad thought he had on his last day at my house during Thanksgiving break, was actually COVID. My brother, however, came out unscathed-as he usually does ;-)

I had taken a COVID test, and it came back positive. Well at least I managed to not get it until now.

I spent the remainder of the day calling, emailing, and texting everyone to redo plans I had for work in the upcoming weeks.

I was bummed I was going to miss some important events for my work but was thankful it was happening in my last two weeks before the semester ended.

I wasn’t concerned at all homework-wise because I had finished all my homework for the remainder of the semester prior to Thanksgiving break (hence why I always work ahead, for scenarios such as this).

I had all the symptoms that came with COVID: chills, fever, aches, migraines, vomiting, runny nose, cough, and loss of taste (but luckily with that symptom, it didn’t impact me much).

I had a fever for about 3 days and had contacted my doctors the minute I knew about it. The nurses would call a couple times a day to check on me and they ended up prescribing me Paxlovid to help try and keep me out of the hospital.

I was still sleeping on my couch because my bedroom was still flooded, and I found out that maintenance couldn’t come by until I was completely symptom free from COVID.

The Paxlovid pills were massive which was no help to my swallowing issues and unfortunately it was unsafe to take my muscle relaxer and my oxycodone until 8 days after my 5th and last dose of Paxlovid.

I spent most of the day on my couch “in bed” and trying to attend my classes virtually when I could.

Unfortunately, my fatigue was at an all-time high since my body was already dealing with so many chronic illnesses.

On December 3rd my floor was finally dry (not clean though), so I moved back to sleeping in my bedroom.

I was still very nauseous and full every day from all the postnasal drip going into my stomach (as we know from my cold/flu from a few weeks ago). I was typically vomiting mucus 1-2 times every day.

December 6th was the first time I left my house since November 26th, and I had 2 doctor’s appointments back-to-back.

I was getting my second HPV shot, my flu shot and seeing my new primary care doctor. I had taken multiple Tylenol’s beforehand to lessen the side effects.

I hadn’t realized I hadn’t seen my new primary doctor since July of 2021 (when I was in my massive flare resulting in TPN) so they were ecstatic to see me and “how good I looked”. I was laughing because I was trying to tell them “Normally, I look even better than this!!”- since I had come into their office feeling awful from COVID.

The remainder of my finals week I stayed home and completed my assignments virtually since even after just sitting at my desk on my computer, I’d be shaking from fatigue.

I was proud that I finished another semester and couldn’t wait to rest during winter break!

 See how Emma’s rest goes in “A Restful Winter Break”.