Jessica Tapper with her children Matteo Agostini and Violet Agostini at their home in Oak Lawn. Violet holds a photo of Father Matthew “Turk” Agostini, who died of COVID-19 headaches in November 2020, weeks before Matteo’s birth.
Tyler Pasciak LaRivière / Sun-Times
But it wasn’t all that unusual after Gov. J. B. Pritzker said on March 20, 2020, “To prevent the potential loss of tens of thousands of lives, we will have to enact an immediate stay-at-home order for everyone in Illinois.
At that point, we knew, well, most of us, that the coronavirus was serious.
There were counts of sick and dead. To keep us safe, we were told to wash our hands thoroughly and often. Many of us clean our races. Some drank more, or sought recommendations, via Zoom.
When, regardless, a favorite place to eat reopened, we never imagined the food could be so good. We watched our children return to school and rejoice at the sound of their screams, even as we worry about the long-term effects. about them from past isolation and distance learning.
Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, things have slowly returned to normal.
And most of us would say that the pandemic has replaced us in some way. Maybe we missed a task or chose to leave one. Maybe we enjoy a succumbing to the virus. Then there are the tactics where we do safe things in tactics we’ve never had before. The “visit” of a telehealth doctor. An assembly via video. Or just feel a trace of worry about the sound of nearby coughing.
Some other people have been affected by the pandemic. Here are some of their stories.
Jessica Tapper went to the hospital for an ultrasound at 8 months into her pregnancy and took the elevator to the basement. He headed to the hospital morgue to retrieve a plastic bag containing his partner’s wallet, clothes and cell phone.
Less than a month later, Tapper, who then lived in Logan Square, gave birth. He named his baby Matteo (Matthew in Italian), after his father, Chicago space music maker Matthew “Turk” Agostini, who died of COVID headaches two days earlier. Thanksgiving 2020.
Now, Tapper, 40, says he’s doing what he can. She had two children with Agostini, Matteo and her daughter Violet, who is in kindergarten.
“She misses him,” Tapper says as he parks outside his daughter’s elementary school at pickup time. “She talks about him all the time. I don’t know what to say to him. I miss him too. What do you say?” to your child who needs his father?
Apassstini, 50, was ill for about two weeks before he died. Although he was getting sicker and sicker at home, he didn’t need to go to the hospital.
“I was afraid of being intubated and put on a ventilator,” Tapper says. “He just didn’t need this to be the end for him. I didn’t need to die like this. “
Agostini’s death triggered waves of anxiety and depression.
“I didn’t need to faint,” she says. I get grocery delivery, I order a bunch of Amazon. “
His rent in Logan Square was too expensive, so he first moved to Pilsen, then, about a year and a half ago, to Oak Lawn, where he is closer to his family.
Agostini was also a composer and consulting musician, and Tapper retained all his production apparatus and musical instruments.
“It’s very difficult for me to get rid of anything,” she says.
She helps keep Agostini’s photographs close.
“I have two on the wall right next to my bedroom door,” he says. “One is the height for Matteo to kiss. And the other is the height for [Violet] to kiss.
One of Agostini’s acoustic guitars sits on a stand in his living room. The mast is now a bit deformed, which makes it almost tuned. But that doesn’t worry Matteo.
“He comes and plays the strings all the time,” Tapper says. “I wonder what his father would say. That’s what I think about all the time. I wish I could ask you what you think of your child. And I can’t.
Brenda Parker with her grandchildren (left to right) Serenity, 5, Tressa, 7 and Trinity, 11.
Abundant
Brenda Parker knew she was looking to avoid going to the hospital. The 63-year-old South Shore resident says she never sought emergency care when she became ill with COVID in May 2021.
That’s the father of her son who had died in a hospital of coronavirus.
“When I had COVID, he took it badly and I said, ‘Well, I’m not going to be like your dad,'” Parker says.
He had a fever and cough. But he tells her he’s lucky, even now, after the lasting effects of a long COVID disrupted his life.
Parker says it with a chill, maybe a very strong chill. She thought no one else had noticed.
But then, he says, “Someone recently said to me, ‘Girl, I think you were having a seizure. ‘”
Several times a day, Parker says he feels like he’s losing his body. He trembles as if he has a seizure.
“If you don’t know me, it probably wouldn’t be noticed,” he says. “But, if we’re in a conversation, then it shows a lot. And I’m well aware of that.
She says she has no control when the tremor occurs and just has to let it “run its course. “
She was also hit by brain fog, a not unusual symptom of COVID. In the middle of a conversation, Parker suddenly stutters or is speechless.
“It’s like my brain thinks faster than my mouth and I just can’t pronounce the words,” he says. “It’s very frustrating. “
Parker, who was deputy executive director of the Gary Housing Authority until his expired retirement last year, has also had other issues as a result of the long-term effects of COVID. At one point, due to his uncontrollable shaking and loss of balance, he fell off a ladder two steps and ended up in the hospital with an injured leg.
Doctors examined her to see if the shaking all over her body was severe, but they didn’t discover anything.
“They just say if those are the only side effects I have, I deserve luck,” he says. COVID “has affected us all in one way or another. “
As a result of what he’s been through, Parker says he’s now taking better care of himself, eating and looking to make healthy choices. And, as the doctors told her, she feels lucky.
“I’m very fortunate that it’s not worse than before,” she says.
Claudio Vélez, known as “Tamale Guy,” is back on the streets promoting his chicken, red meat and cheese tamales, after being marginalized by COVID-19 for more than a year.
Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Times
Claudio Velez, known as “Tamale Guy,” now has a hoarse voice as a result of COVID. And its costs have risen a bit: Blame inflation, not the virus, for the $7 for six tamales that pile up at $9.
But Velez is once a savior of tamales for the crowd of late-night bars on the Near West Side.
“Tamales!Tamales!” He screams as he wears a red and white cooler with his homemade creations of chicken, red meat and cheese.
Velez, 58, had a brutal case of COVID for more than a year. He spent about five weeks in 2020 at Rush University Medical Center, intubated for most of that time. That’s what left him with his voice still rough.
“I felt very sad, very lonely,” Velez says of his stay.
Velez spent a year recovering. But now he has returned to what he started a quarter of a century ago, when he arrived in Chicago from the Mexican hotel in Acapulco. Six days a week, he arrives at his Logan Square kitchen around 6:30 a. m. to fix and Pack the tamales, in collaboration with 3 members of the circle of relatives. He then heads home for a 3-hour nap before hitting the road in his red Kia sedan to offer his tamales to the world.
The time to sell, he says, is between 11 p. m. and 11 p. m. and 1 a. M. , when bars are about to close and consumers are hungry to eat something.
He’s a popular enough character that other people have contributed to two GoFundMe campaigns to raise money for his business and help pay his medical bills, but Velez says he’s still short of money, which is why he works so hard.
He also appreciates the recognition, the hugs and the way some people call him “Santa Claus for the drunk and hungry. “
“It’s like his passion,” Osmar Velez, 33, one of his five children, says of his father as Tamale Guy.
Melissa Smejkal says that before her daughter Zara contracted COVID, she played hockey, lifted weights and was a wonderful student.
Now, 13-year-old Zara spends most of her days in bed, too tired to do anything she used to love. He missed part of this school year because of the long COVID pandemic, according to his mother, who says it can take hours. enough to take on your schoolwork.
“He tried to do anything and fainted,” said Smejkal, an attorney who lives in West Loop.
She believes her daughter contracted COVID 3 times in 2021, in May, August and December, she was vaccinated as soon as vaccines became available.
“It was general COVID,” his mother says. You know, stuffy nose, no vomiting, like a child with health problems. “
But with the infection in December, Zara’s symptoms were much worse and he didn’t recover. He started having terrible headaches and dizziness, then chest pain and shortness of breath. Visits from neurologists and cardiologists didn’t help, according to his mother, who says doctors couldn’t figure out what’s causing his symptoms.
“It absolutely replaced everything,” says Smejkal. Because he has trouble breathing when he exercises, he tries to push himself and then feels much worse.
After dozens of visits to specialists, Smejkal says, doctors still came up with a diagnosis. The fully vaccinated teenager had long suffered from COVID and POTS, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which causes an immediate central index by shifting from mendacity downward. stand up. Dizziness and fainting are common. The syndrome has been linked to post-COVID illnesses.
There is no known cure for POTS or prolonged COVID. For POTS, pain control and treatment may depend on symptoms.
Long COVID “literally never crossed my mind,” Smejkal says. “Everyone I knew had long COVID had respiratory problems, but they were gone within a few months. I mean, let’s go for two years now.
To help with the long COVID, doctors have nutrients and supplements.
And, for more than two weeks, Zara has been visiting the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab’s pain management clinic once a week for physical treatment and counseling.
She remains positive, her mother says.
Still, Smejkal says invasive testing and countless doctor visits could have been avoided if Zara had previously been diagnosed with prolonged COVID.
“I know there are other people who are probably going through what we’ve been through,” Smejkal says. some of the medicines for POTS before.
Melanie Kupchynsky, violinist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra: Unable to recover what was lost but satisfied to have returned.
Abundant
Melanie Kupchynsky, 61, a violinist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has been playing with the tool since she was 4.
“We’ve spent our whole lives trying to be informed about how to get this right to get to where we are,” Kupchynsky says. “It was just unbelievable that we had to prevent for so long, and scary. “
On the contrary, she says her love for music only deepened in the quiet months when she was forced to distance herself from her fellow musicians.
“I never had any idea what the world could be like without it, until we ran out of it,” he says. “I have tears in my eyes just thinking about it. It was incredibly wonderful to be back. When you almost lose something, it becomes much more valuable to you.
During the closure of Orchestra Hall, of course, he continued to practice at home. During the months, he took his score and violin to his back terrace.
“My neighbors didn’t seem to care,” he described the party in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times two years ago. “They agreed to hear the same thing over and over again. “
She and a handful of musician friends even hosted a concert on the outdoor porch of their space in August 2020.
But there’s nothing like being back at Orchestra Hall for the first time a year later.
“It’s like being a kid on the first day of school,” he says. “It’s great, super exciting. “
The CSO recently returned from a sold-out mini tour in Florida.
Musicians are being tested for coronavirus and want to be “super, hyper-careful,” Kupchynsky says. “Many musicians are very, very vital and cannot be easily replaced. One less violin will not spoil the concert. Not having a major wind or major brass would actually ruin things. These other people are under a lot more pressure to get back to being important in healthy ways, that’s for sure.
When he starts coughing in the audience, “all heads are turning,” Kupchynsky says.
She has duration due to the pandemic. This is the moment she and the orchestra missed with Ricardo Muti, the music director of the CSO, now in its final season in Chicago.
“I think I had noticed everything quite a bit, and then Muti arrived,” he says. “All the Italian music we made with him was a revelation for me. It was awesome music, things I had never dreamed of. Losing some of that is very sad. But we will see him again. “
That’s because Muti agreed to return next season to lead CSO’s European tour.
Christian Lane, suffering from the effects of the long COVID, may feel pain, close to the middle of his forehead. Most likely, the pain in your eye will follow, leaving your left eye sore as if you had just punched him in the face.
The 50-year-old Ravenswood resident is a musician, maker and composer, constant itching in his eyes and blurred vision make his paintings exhausting.
He tested positive for COVID last October. Her doctor doesn’t know how long your symptoms may last, though Lane says your fitness is slowly improving.
He has been playing guitar since he was 6 years old and also plays bass and piano. He spends much of his time on a computer, editing and generating music, and the rest instruments.
However, since he had COVID, he’s had to stare at his screen for hours to do his job.
Lane’s doctor wasn’t surprised that he developed prolonged COVID. Lane also suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, so he already had a weakened immune system. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, immunocompromised patients are more likely to enjoy more potent effects of a COVID infection or remain in poor health longer.
The doctor told him that there were few remedy features for prolonged COVID besides a drug similar to Paxlovid, which is now commonly prescribed to COVID patients.
“My doctor learns as much from me as I learn from her,” Lane says.
Lane is thankful his symptoms weren’t even worse.
“What I’m thinking is, ‘Oh my God, I know other people are in so much pain and it will have to be so horrible,'” she says. “It makes me empathetic with them. And I also feel that this should not be minimized.
Shari Para, a former nurse at UChicago Medicine Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey, is now moving as a nurse.
Tyler LaRivière / Sun-Times
At the beginning of the pandemic, nurses from temporary agencies would report for a new assignment at the hospital and leave upon learning that they had been assigned to one of the many newly designated COVID floors.
“At the time, no one wanted to enter those rooms,” not even doctors, said Shari Para, a mother of two young children in Tinley Park who works as a transitional nurse in Chicago.
Para, 40, says the reaction made her a little bitter. But also for her how much she loves what she does.
“I’m a nurse because I like to take care of people,” she says. “I love medicine. I love anatomy and physiology. That’s my purpose in life. “
When the virus surged, there were times when Para could only care for five COVID patients alone. To get ahead, she depended on the “moral support” of the nurses who accompanied her.
“I wouldn’t have gone those 12 hours without collapsing if I hadn’t had those other nurses with me,” Para says.
He also says he would leave to escape any news about the severity and scope of COVID’s devastation and simply move on to work with “blinders,” without having seen or read the news. She avoids the news, relying on her husband for the highlights of the day.
“I’ve noticed that other people are eaten alive because they’re angry about the money [of the hospital] CEOs make,” Para says. “Or they’re crazy about the number of deaths from COVID. You’re definitely going to leave the field. It’s overwhelming.
However, she felt overwhelmed. Around the first Christmas of the pandemic, he says he took a week off to spend uninterrupted time with his circle of family and to rest from months of 12-hour shifts treating COVID patients.
These days, she sees far fewer COVID patients. But she hasn’t forgotten the other people who lost their lives to the virus. Like a 69-year-old woman who was terrified of having to put him on a ventilator. Para says he took the woman’s hand and prayed with her. After weeks of hospitalization, the woman was discharged without intubation, but later died at home.
“I’m crying for her,” Para said.
She says she’s grateful for her family: her two children, who are five and six, and her husband, who says he knows when he wants a hug.
“He is very supportive of me in everything I do, and he’s very proud of me, and he tells me that all the time,” he says.
At 40, Para estimates that he still has about 25 years of life ahead of him. And she knows how she’s going to get by.
“In fact, I can tell you that I’m going to be a nurse,” she says.