Seabury has faced disease before. In 2020, 2021 and 2022, Head of School Don Schawang and his staff battled the coronavirus. With Zoom, face shields, masks and stay-home orders, Seabury rode out the viral storm. Yet most have forgotten the scratchy feeling of a mask on their chin at the end of a long day, or Zoom’s monotone drone. A new disease is lurking, though it is not nearly as dangerous. In spite of an unusually warm October, pneumonia has been creeping around the Seabury hallways. Those caught in the aerosol crossfire, or those foolish enough to share drinks, spent the early weeks of October with liquid lungs. People have been ill. More than ten people have come down with pneumonia this month, spending days in bed and nights in urgent care centers. The emptier hallways and athletic teams tell a sick story.
Now on the other side, recovered and dazed Seahawks reflect on their viral trials.
“It started one cloudy day, says sophomore Jace Asher ominously. “I came to school and I felt normal. Then I went home… But when I woke up, I had a fever, a sore throat and it was hard to breathe.” One day he was fine, the next he was bedridden. Asher was sick for a week but is quick to add that “tea with honey” was the most effective cure.
Tea may have been a sufficient cure for Asher, but other Seahawks needed medication to beat pneumonia. “I was exposed to like three other people with pneumonia before I got it,” says junior Roman Ardery, who got sick at the end of a soccer game. “[I] was coughing,” he recalls. “It was hard to breathe. I had chills in my bed even though it was like 76 degrees.” Ardery ended up having to turn to antibiotics to beat the liquid in his lungs. “The antibiotics took care of it,” says Ardery, “[but] it was still awful.”
As pneumonia rages among the students, a few pathogens have even broken through to the faculty. Spanish teacher Jen Fernandez remembers “I didn’t really find out at first [that I had pneumonia.]” She says, “I was sick for two weeks [without knowing I had pneumonia]. The first week, I went to the doctor, and I was told that I just had a chest cold, like congestion, and that it was very common. I went back two weeks later and I got a chest congestion and then they told me I had pneumonia.” Fernandez describes the worst of the infection as “terrible.” The virus put her life on pause as she had to withdraw to recover. “I am in a choir,” she explains, “so I can’t sing. I would wake up in the middle of the night and [as a result I got] horrible sleep.” Like Ardery, she had to go “on antibiotics [to be] cured.” Fernandez’s advice to Seahawks is to go easy on themselves, stressing that they should “truly stay home if you are not feeling really well.” “I thought that I just had a cold,” she explains, “[and] I was still at work. Definitely go to a doctor and have them take you seriously if you are not feeling really well,” she urges.
Junior Milton Okazaki Lopez echoes Fernandez’s advice and urges Seahawks to “take care of [themselves]” but also recommends that they do not “share drinks with [their] friend”- a common culprit for pneumonia’s spread. Okazaki Lopez, who fell ill in early October, says, “It was like having asthma.[It was] awful … I had a little bit of [a] fever, and I felt cold and hot at the same time. I was really sweaty.”
Junior Max Fagan puts it bluntly: “[Pneumonia] was the worst,” he says. “It was just really bad.” Fagan remembers pneumonia like it was a cruel, hellish punishment. “I would have to cough so much that I would make myself throw up. It seemed like it would not end,” Fagan says. “I was running a fever for five days straight.” His advice for Seahawks to avoid pneumonia is as simple as his description of the disease is gruesome. “Don’t get it,” he says. “Don’t.”
It seems that most of the pneumonia storm has passed, and we may be moving into a healthier November. Yet as winter approaches and the air gets colder, we should take the advice of October’s pneumonia survivors to handle December’s approaching colds. Seahawks should stay home if they are sick, and cough into their elbows. As bad as pneumonia can get, we should be thankful that it did not shut the school down like the coronavirus did four years ago.
