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Local woman enduring virus fight

As of Friday evening, it hadn’t shown up on the state Department of Health website, but Blair County, nevertheless, may have its second coronavirus case.

It’s the case of Rachel Allison of Altoona, who has posted about her ongoing experience on Facebook.

“I never thought in a million years this could happen to me,” wrote Allison, 37. “When I’m wrong, I say I’m wrong. We are guilty of not taking this serious enough from Day 1.”

“Day 1” — a couple of months ago — Allison and her husband Mike thought “this whole thing was a media-driven tactic,” Mike said Friday by phone.

And in the succeeding weeks, he grew frustrated with the school closures and the sports cancellations, he said.

But then eight days ago, Rachel came down with a headache, then a fever, then a cough, then a loss of taste and smell, then an upset stomach, then pneumonia.

On Wednesday, she had a specimen sample taken at UPMC’s new collection facility on Pleasant Valley Boulevard, then on Thursday evening late, she received a phone call from her primary care doctor.

She had COVID-19.

“Now we’re living it,” said Mike, who’s in quarantine with Rachel and their seven-year-old daughter Jordyn at home. “It’s very real and scary.”

Rachel’s coughing fits can last as long as five minutes, and once they start, they’re hard to stop, Mike said.

The coughing racks her body, makes her lightheaded, takes her breath away. When she’s not doing it, she waits warily in order to hold it at bay.

“She sits still as long as she can,” he said.

It’s hard for her to walk unassisted, and she gets dizzy and has a “cloudy brain,” she wrote.

“She’s been very afraid,” Mike said.

Still, she hasn’t had to be hospitalized.

As difficult as it’s been, Rachel is young and she was healthy, so it’s easy to see why the disease is such a threat to older people, Mike said.

“I can see where an elderly person would struggle to get through,” he said.

The Department of Health has told Rachel that her co-workers are not at risk of infection from her, because she hasn’t been at work since three days before her symptoms began, she wrote on Facebook.

Her husband and daughter are doing well, she wrote.

Rachel doesn’t know how she caught the virus.

“All it takes is ONE person that has a slight cough and thinks they are fine to go out in public and touch a product at the store and not buy it, and the next person comes along and touches it,” she wrote. “Wildfire.”

“You almost have to act like the people around you do have it,” Mike said. “You just don’t know who is carrying it.”

Having “done a complete 180” on COVID-19, the Allisons have gone public to alert anyone still “hardheaded” — someone who isn’t staying home, who’s not being careful — that the disease is a formidable enemy.

“Maybe this will open a few eyeballs,” Mike said.

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