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A spirit that is not afraid

AU student warns others after her COVID experience

Landry Chizik and Chase Robinson both tested positive for COVID-19 this summer.
Landry Chizik and Chase Robinson both tested positive for COVID-19 this summer.

 When Landry Chizik, senior in communications, went to the beach this past Fourth of July with some friends and family, she thought she understood the risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. While they were there, Chizik said she felt like everyone was taking the correct precautions and doing their best to avoid coming into contact with the virus. They socially distanced; they wore masks. 

“We were being, obviously, very cautious,” Chizik said.

However, near the end of the trip, Chizik’s boyfriend, Chase Robinson, started to feel a little unwell. Just a little. 

“I guess it was the last night that I started feeling a little sick,” Robinson said. “But honestly, I didn’t even think I was sick because it was just chills.” 

At first, Robinson even attributed the chills to sleeping in a room with the AC on high all night. On the way home, he said he felt a little bit of headache, but he wasn’t too concerned about that either. After all, who hasn’t spent a holiday week at the beach and not felt a little sun-worn and tired?

It wasn’t until Robinson’s mom encouraged him to get a test before going back to work that he thought he might have COVID-19.

“He got tested,” Chizik said. “It was positive; so I immediately self quarantined.”

Within a few days, Chizik also tested positive, along with seven other friends and family members who had been at the beach together. 

Less than a week after celebrating Independence Day in Destin, Chizik found herself quarantined in her room, positive and symptomatic. 

First, she said it felt like a bad cold. Then, she lost her sense of taste and smell. 

“About day five, I started having a little bit of trouble breathing, but it was just because there was congestion in my chest,” Landry said. 

Eventually, it got to the point where Landry said she felt nauseous for two weeks straight. 

“I was extremely nauseous for 14 days straight,” she said. “That was the strangest thing for me was that I woke up every single day nauseous for 14 days straight. That part was awful too because I just didn’t ever feel normal; I had no energy”

She suspects she lost ten pounds from not eating. 

On the other hand, Robinson said that apart from the chills in Destin and the headache on the car ride home, he didn’t have any other symptoms. Regardless, he said the days of quarantine gave him a lot of time to think.

Robinson said he was constantly worried that even though he remained largely asymptomatic, he could have passed a more aggressive case to Chizik’s family. 

Chizik’s dad, former Auburn football coach Gene Chizik, was one of the few members of the family who never tested positive, but both of Landry’s siblings tested positive soon after. 

“The sickness was nothing compared to how I felt about risking other peoples’ health,” Robinson said. “That was miserable for me to live with.” 

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Chizik also said that the virus exacted a mental toll, but her’s was slightly different. 

“It’s very mentally debilitating in a way because you are sitting in your room for 14 days with no human interaction,” she said. “That’s mentally hard for a lot of people to do.” 

She said she especially struggled with anxiety during those two weeks. 

“It makes you very anxious knowing that you have this virus in your body that no one knows about,” she said. 

That stress, the fear of the unknown, is part of the reason Chizik said people her age should take this virus as seriously as possible. 

“I know that, obviously, I’m blessed to be young and healthy … but it’s not something to take for granted and say that just because I am healthy doesn’t mean I don’t have to correctly follow all the guidelines,” she said. “I would just urge people our age to take it very seriously. I know that they may be healthy, but it’s so, so spreadable.”


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