How Covid Affected Eating Habits

When the coronavirus was initially announced I was working at Albertsons, a grocery store in California, and there was never a moment of rest on my shifts unless I was on lunch. As I would go through my shifts there were hundreds of people inside the store trying to stock up on everything they could get their hands on for fear they wouldn’t be able to get food later on. On many occasions I witnessed customers steal things out of another customer’s shopping cart, mostly younger adults stealing from elderly people who were practically defenseless in the situation. More times than I can count on one hand there were physical fights between customers over food items or toilet paper. With multiple of those fights, I had to get between them and end the conflict before removing them from the store where they sometimes had to speak to law enforcement after. 

While working you’re not allowed to shop for groceries because you’re being paid to work, not shop. On the multiple occasions I was the opening courtesy clerk there would be people lined up outside the doors waiting for us to open so they could get the things they needed before it got even busier. Generally within the first hour or so most of the shelves were cleared and all the toiletries were gone. The store had people restocking for basically their entire shift but at the pace, customers were grabbing things at they couldn’t keep up and eventually we reached a point where we set the boxes of items out and let people get their things like that. 

By the time my shift was over the shelves were cleared of every type of sustainable food and toiletries weren’t even an option at that point, regardless of if I had an opening, closing, or afternoon shift. As the days passed my parents would go to multiple stores (Costco, Ralphs, Albertsons, Walmart, Target, etc.) just trying to find food for us to eat at home because we were running out of “supplies” as my dad would say, but we never had any luck. Due to their age it eventually just became too dangerous for them to be in stores. Between fear of them contracting the coronavirus and being physically assaulted by other customers in stores if they had something another person wanted, we decided it would be better for them to stay home and I would do the shopping. 

After weeks of work being a complete madhouse, it slowly began to settle a bit as people realized they were hoarding for practically no reason because stores were remaining open. My store, thankfully, had begun giving employees a set time to shop for things they needed and to get toiletries for their families before customers came in and cleared it out. By this point limits had already been placed on almost every single item in the stores so that customers were unable to buy, for example, 15 cans of soup, now they could max out at 3 or 5, something low enough that they had enough to get by for a few days with their other items and other people had a chance to also buy soup. 

In my family, my Dad, Slenderman, and Goliath all have NASCAR fast metabolisms meaning they eat a lot more than most people and a lot more often. My mom’s metabolism isn’t as fast as theirs is but she still eats often throughout the course of the day, her proportions just aren’t as big. My metabolism is pretty down the middle. I eat as often as my Dad and siblings do, I don’t eat as much but I do eat more than what my Mom would. Because all of us eat so much so consistently we were constantly going to the store for food pre-Covid and once Covid hit we struggled a lot. We didn’t really have enough food for us to eat the way we normally would and that took a toll on all of us the longer it went on. We all had less energy and were all incredibly cranky and miserable. 

Before corona, our diets were extremely balanced and my Mom made sure that we hit all our food groups at dinnertime, breakfast, and lunch was generally up to us. After corona started we didn’t have the resources to eat meals like that and our diets became pretty unhealthy. Occasionally we would skip breakfast or lunch so we would have something to eat for dinner and partly to ensure that if things didn’t calm down soon we would have some food for a couple of extra days. Shockingly we didn’t reach the point of needing to aggressively stretch our time between meals although we came disturbingly close.

The result of not eating properly definitely put massive strains on my family's relationship with one another. Everyone had a temper and there were times where one of us would get mad at another person for simply existing even though that wouldn’t be the case on any other day. My parents were frustrated because they were practically stuck at home 24/7 to make sure they stayed safe and we didn’t have enough food or toiletries and there was nothing they could do about it. My Mom felt sick often because she wasn’t getting enough nutrients, my Dad and Clayton were set off by the smallest things because he wasn’t getting enough food to keep up with his metabolism, Rachel was crankier than normal and took it out on everyone else, and I was working constantly and when I’d come home from work I would be exhausted but the mixture of exhaustion, hunger and everyone else being a ticking time bomb didn’t lead to anything pretty.

This is what Albertsons looks like: Before Covid my store was open from 7 am through 12 am but once Covid started we opened at 6 am and closed at 11 pm. We set hours for the elderly to shop between 6 am and 8 am, which I always thought was insanely early but the rules are the rules. In real life the store is certainly not this bright, that would be intense.

This is me during one of my closing shifts: Mildly embarrassing picture but nothing I can do about it now so it’s alright. With Covid employees and customers were required to wear their masks 100% of the time while inside the building by law. There were many instances where people were told to leave because they refused to wear a mask and those conversations were never very exciting to have. Most of the time when a customer was told to put a mask on or leave they had a tendency to start yelling and cussing at the employee who was simply trying not to get in trouble with the managers. On the off chance it was a manager who told a customer to leave and they reacted poorly, which only happened once, they were physically removed by security from the store.

Where I find my Covid Information

When the coronavirus was first announced and schools closed I got my information generally from my parents and my friends. I‘ve never paid much attention to any broad public concerns, just did what I was told I had to do and went about my business. Overtime as the pandemic became a larger and more pressing issue I began to only rely on the information I found on my own. My parents began to believe that the whole pandemic was a government scheme and wasn’t real. A large majority of my friends felt it was real but never cared much about it beyond that and had a tendency to fight the safety regulations that got put into place. 

My belief that the coronavirus is a real issue and my parents lack of belief in it caused minor issues in our relationship. When the coronavirus was announced I was working in a grocery store and we required all customers to wear their masks inside the building, by law we had to do so, and my parents would give me loads of grief over this saying it was a violation of their rights to be required to wear one. In the end they always put one on before going in and kept it on while shopping seeing as it was that or they would be kicked out. The longer these rules were in place the less they argued and complained about doing it but the more annoyed they got about doing anything which made it increasingly harder to do anything near them. It also sparked a variety of arguments during dinnertime on all the “stupid” rules that we were all required to follow. I personally enjoyed the social distancing rules, I liked having my own space. I also like the masks because I tend to talk to myself and with a mask on you can’t tell. 

My parents rely heavily on political leaders for their information while I have always more relied on medical professionals and those licensed in dealing with things like this. I don’t see, or understand, why political leaders have a say in what to do during this situation seeing as their field of expertise is in politics and not in public health or safety. 

Over the months that Covid has been around it has become heavily politicized when that should have never been the case. The coronavirus is a very real virus and it has made thousands of people extremely sick and also resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. However, once the coronavirus was pulled into politics the numbers of people sick/dying of it sky rocketed because people started reporting any illness/death that occurred as related to Covid and due to that people began to aggressively doubt the legitimacy of the disease. 

I think in the long run that the way the pandemic has become politicized and the pandemic itself are going to be nearly equally dangerous. The virus itself has caused the deaths of thousands but at the same time the way it’s been so heavily involved in politics has also resulted in a number of those deaths that maybe wouldn’t have happened if it had remained out of it. 

For college students in particular the CDC has some tips that are pretty basic but it’s definitely better to be safe than sorry in times like these. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/downloads/College-Poster-COVID-Tips-for-Students.pdf

I also try to regularly check on the amount of cases there are, how active the spread is in the areas around me, see how testing is going and a few other things. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_totalcases

College Campus Life

I’ve been living in the campus dorms in Baldwin Hall for the past couple weeks and I’ve noticed that everyone is extremely respectful of the Covid rules in place. All the residents wear their masks outside their dorms, social distance from others wherever they have space to, they all wash their hands often, and when they don’t feel good they stay in their dorms to be safe. When it comes to other students on campus I see many who walk around without their masks on, they walk around with their mask tucked underneath their chin, or they have their masks tucked under their noses. 

Wearing a mask, especially when it’s hot and humid, sucks but the reasoning behind wearing them should be enough to keep it on for a few minutes while you’re walking around or in class when you’re just sitting there. What many people seem to forget is even though they may not be at high risk for getting covid but someone near them or someone in one of their classes could have an underlying health issue that puts them at a higher risk or they could live with someone who’s at a higher risk.

I’m down the middle of if we’ll be online before the end of this semester or continue with on-campus classes. The number of Covid cases seems to continue to rise but a lot of people are becoming less strict with the way they go about their daily lives with Covid still being a major issue. I feel that it’s raising our chances of having to go completely online. I think that if people would continue to make sure they wore their masks everywhere, social distanced in public and class, washed their hands regularly, and stayed in when they didn’t feel well, we will be able to remain on campus and maybe even have more classes switch to in person.

In this picture, I was at a gathering with a number of people from my church group. We all met up off-campus at the guys’ house for dinner and to play frisbee, spike ball, and corn hole. Even though we were all social distanced for the most part we all had our masks on just to protect one another and ourselves. Things like that, seeing people be responsible for themselves, gives me hope that maybe we will get to have in-person classes this year. 

I also continually wonder how Greek and Sorority life will continue with Covid. I understand the importance of these groups but I also feel like with everything going on that all of the events they hold and the amount of people living in such a confined space is a huge risk for not only those students but any other students they come in contact with. I’m not well educated on fraternities or sororities but I do feel that they pose a major threat to the likelihood that we’re able to remain on campus instead of going completely online.

Something that I noticed during rush for Greek and Sorority life is how close everyone is to one another without wearing masks or social distancing. There are hundreds of students participating in rush and if just one of those students is sick it could snowball and result in hundreds of cases of the coronavirus on campus and it would be forced to close. I feel that with how dangerous this pandemic truly is that now just simply isn’t the time to be holding these events especially without enforcing social distancing or the usage of masks.

A Little About my Schooling, Sports, and Injuries

*If you read my first post you may already know a few of these things*

Hihi! My name is Elaine Morisset, I am 18 years old and I’m from Mission Viejo, California. Currently, I’m living in Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky, attending the University of Kentucky as a freshman. I lived in the same house in Mission Viejo (MV) for my entire life until I moved to college.

I’ve been going to some form of school since I was 6 months old because both of my parents worked full time. I went to a countless number of preschools but I remained at one called Marina View Preschool and Kindergarten for two years. After Kindergarten I went to three different elementary schools. For first grade I attended O’Neill Elementary, which closed down permanently after my first year. For second and third grade I went to Melinda Heights Elementary but I left due to abusive teachers. I then transferred to De Portola Elementary where I remained for fourth through sixth grade even though the teachers weren’t much better than previous ones we ran out of schools to go to. For middle school, I went to Rancho Santa Margarita Intermediate (RSM Intermediate) where I met my best friend Bri. After middle school, I went to Trabuco Hills High School for all four years.

In high school, I did multiple sports: track, wrestling, water polo, and martial arts. I’ve been doing martial arts for a large portion of my life but the others I picked up my freshman year when I was 14 years old. Unfortunately for me, my track coach wasn’t ideal in certain aspects. If you didn’t know, in track you have to weight lift to help build muscles. My coach, however, was not well informed when it came to an athlete’s bodily limits and pushed those of us he favored far beyond our limits. For example one of the lift exercises we were required to do was deadlift and once every other week we would be required to max out which is basically where you add more and more weight on until you can no longer complete a single rep. On max out days he would push me past my breaking point at an unhealthy level (I know coaches are meant to push you to an extent but not to the point you get injured). At the age of 14, with a body that is still early in its developmental stage, I was deadlifting 250lbs when I only weighed around 110lbs. The result of my coach constantly pushing me to lift more and more with all the exercises led to me needing two shoulder surgeries. From lifting so much at such a young age with no real guidance I stretched out and tore all of the ligaments in both of my shoulders to the point they could dislocate randomly throughout the day and if I wanted to I could dislocate them and pop them back in. 

With my shoulder injuries, I had to stop doing track, water polo, and wrestling but I stayed with martial arts because, in the beginning, we had no idea how severe the injury was. I have a high pain tolerance so I felt more of an ache than anything even though I should’ve been in a lot of pain. Before jumping right into surgery I tried doing physical therapy for almost two years before Doctors had me have an x-ray and MRI done which is what made us realize how useless P.T. was at this point. After the MRI I stopped martial arts as well and a few months later I had my first surgery on my right shoulder on July 12, 2018. Typically when you’re young or need multiple surgeries on certain parts of your body surgeons prefer to wait around a year before performing the next one just to make sure there are no complications. I ended up having my second surgery roughly 6 months later because I was healing well and my arm was functional enough that I could afford to do it. I had surgery on my left shoulder on December 20, 2018, needless to say, Christmas was interesting.

As of now, my shoulders are as healed as they will get. There are a few things that my shoulders won’t do that most other people can do but nothing that prevents me from living my everyday life. An example would be like when most people lay flat on their backs and stretch their arms over their heads their arms will rest flat on the floor, mine however can’t do that. I can only get my hands to touch the floor and even that brings discomfort. I’m also not allowed to lift heavy like I was before without putting myself at risk of needing another surgery but I can still lift. 

Deadlift example: https://youtu.be/-4qRntuXBSc

This is me now (I’m a natural blonde but I recently dyed my hair black):  

This is me just after getting home from my first surgery (7/12/2018): My surgery was initially scheduled for around 11 am but I ended up being able to go in at around 7:30 am. I was exhausted when I got there and it was a 2.5-hour procedure then after I woke up I had to wait an hour before I could go home. When I got home I was pretty cranky because my body hurt, I was tired, I was extremely uncomfortable because I had this bandage on my shoulder that was bigger than shoulder pads for football players and the sling I had to keep on (even to sleep) was the type with the pillow so that wasn’t pleasant. I was also extremely hungry because I wasn’t allowed to eat anything past 10 am the day before. 

This is what I looked like after my second surgery (12/20/18): This surgery was the one that hurt more even though the damage to the ligaments in my left shoulder was less severe. About a week and a half before I went in for this surgery I got my wisdom teeth pulled and they gave me anesthetics to make me sleep during the procedure so I feel like my body just wasn’t cooperating with being put under again so soon. After they gave me the anesthetics for my shoulder I stayed awake for a pretty long time except I couldn’t move much because my body felt heavy but I was awake enough to feel pain and know what was going on around me. If you’ve never had surgery before when you have surgery on certain parts of the body they give you nerve blocks to help prevent or manage pain. For my shoulder surgeries the nerve blocks, that get inserted with a thick 5-inch needle, go into the junction where your neck and shoulder meet. I was awake when they gave it to me for this surgery, I wasn’t awake for my first one, and I felt it and it hurt, bad. When the needle went in my entire body tensed and my nails ripped open the skin on my palms. I’ve always done my best to avoid showing when something hurts because generally it isn’t too bad but I reacted enough that the male nurse that was taking care of me noticed. He grabbed my hands and said, “squeeze my hands, you won’t hurt me,” and so I did, I squeezed and in that same moment he gasps and goes, “holy shit you’re gonna break my hand,” (sorry about the language) but he didn’t make me let go. After the woman doing the nerve block was done I let go of his hand and was wheeled to the operating room where I was still awake and unbelievably afraid that I wasn’t going to fall asleep. The surgeon asked me to scoot myself onto the table but my body was too heavy so I couldn’t but they moved me and I was awake on that table for only a few minutes before I passed out. When I woke up the nurse that let me hold his hand was chatting with my Mom and he had an ice pack. Before they noticed I was awake I was apologizing for hurting his hand which only made him laugh before showing me how bruised it was from me grabbing it.

This is what my shoulders looked like after I removed the bandages (top-right shoulder, bottom-left shoulder). I had to keep the bandages on for about 3 days after the surgeries and taking them off hurt, it felt like I was ripping my skin off. I actually managed to tear open the sutures on my left shoulder a couple days after taking off the bandages but it wasn’t my fault, Bug stepped on my shoulder on accident and her paw ripped then open. It didn’t hurt but it did look funky.

And this is what my surgery scars look like roughly two years later: The left scars were smaller and healed pretty well but the right ones were a little more intense but they’re also healing nicely. Both surgeries had two incisions on the front side of my shoulder and one on the back but the back ones are practically invisible now.