Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By TOM LAVENTURE
Hurley — The Genisot family wants their COVID-19 experience to give others confidence that the community will get through the pandemic together but to expect that others will become infected before a vaccine or other solution will lessen the threat.
“We’re expecting it with more staff. We’re expecting it with kids,” said Kevin Genisot, the administrator of Hurley K-12 School. “This is something that we are going to deal with at a level that hopefully everyone with an experience will find it even less stressful than ours.”
The Genisot family was meticulous about prevention even before the state and local shutdown orders in March. They stayed on lockdown until summer when their circle opened slightly.
Genisot’s son, Mason, who is a junior this year in Hurley, came down with COVID-19 in mid July. He was working two jobs mowing lawns and doing dishes. He had a friend in quarantine but he isn’t sure how or where he was exposed and if it was contact with a person or an object.
“My friends and I do our best to social distance but it’s not always followed,” Mason said. “I wanted to work to earn money so I knew there was a chance of being exposed even though I took precautions. I wasn’t really scared or too worried, I just didn’t like feeling the way I did.”
While most youth and many adults can have coronavirus without becoming symptomatic it is not always the case. Mason became ill.
“I didn’t feel like getting out of bed for a few days and my whole body hurt,” Mason said. “After two days I started feeling better but wasn’t really good until about a week later. I couldn’t always smell or taste food either.”
Genisot said they received a call that Mason had a contact trace. Two days after the contact Mason started showing symptoms and for three days he had fever, body aches, sinuses, congestion and no taste, smell or energy.
After the third day he started to improve and was able to return to work after 10 days, Genisot said. He is still not fully recovered in terms of energy and soreness.
“He had two days where he was really miserable,” Genisot said. “We’re hoping that he is fully recovered although I read that people sometimes still experience symptoms or signs months later. He seems tired but he is an active teenager who’s on the go until late at night and then up in the morning with a couple of different jobs.”
Mason’s mother, Lori, said that like any mother she wanted to know her son was going to be OK. The COVID-19 “horror stories” were more scary now that someone in her own family was infected.
“It certainly makes it real,” Lori said. “There’s so much uncertainty about everything and the information we hear is constantly changing. I’m just so grateful that it seems he’s fully recovered as well as no one else in the family had symptoms or tested positive.”
The family was in constant contact with Mason’s pediatrician and the staff of the Iron County Health Department. The family described the support as “fantastic.”
Mason’s sister, Sophia, who is a sophomore in Hurley this year, said the family is very good about masking, washing hands and limiting their mobility to shopping. Her brother coming down with coronavirus was a bit of a surprise and concerning.
“I was a little scared for my brother but after a few days I could tell he was getting back to himself,” Sophia said. “I wore a mask around the house because the last thing I wanted was to catch it.”
The quarantine is getting old, Sophia said. She finds ways to have fun and she appreciates just being able to take the dogs for long walks outside.
“I can’t wait to get back to school,” Sophia said.
Genisot, Lori, and Sophia were contacted by Mason’s pediatrician and asked to undergo drive-thru testing at the Marshfield Clinic in Woodruff. All three were notified they tested negative the next day.
“I was expecting all of us to be positive, especially living in close quarters with someone who was positive since the week before,” Genisot said.
The test did not include the antibody test to show if they had been infected but were no longer an active case. It’s possible they were infected but were never symptomatic, he said.
Genisot, Lori and Sophia went into quarantine for 14 days starting on the 10th day of Mason’s quarantine and through Aug. 17.
Genisot spent his day in Zoom meetings, responding to emails and filling out mandates and forms from the Department of Public Instruction. He prefers the office but was able to function and appreciated that someone else who must do their job in person would have found quarantine much more inconvenient.
“Certainly there are drawbacks to not having personal interaction except through Zoom, but I’m OK with that,” he said. “It worked. But I’m happy to be back.”
Moving forward Genisot said his goal is for his family to continue a middleground where they remain diligent with protocols without being overly reactive. Not everyone navigates the pandemic in the same way and that is understandable because people respond to stress differently, he said.
“That is OK because it’s their choice and if we stop worrying about what other people are doing and just care about what we’re doing I think we’re going to be in a better place,” Genisot said.
The goal of protocols is to slow the spread of something that everyone is likely to be exposed to in the coming years, he said. It’s important so that hospitals aren’t overburdened at any given time to help people who will need medical care.
Genisot said his family’s experience gave him an appreciation for what people are feeling. If there is a takeaway it would be that this deeper understanding will help him make decisions with everybody in mind and to maybe communicate and support people that much better.
Sharing the COVID-19 message with students is done according to grade levels, he said. The information that will resonate with elementary school students is different from the message to middle-schoolers and high school students.
The message for all students is that the reality that some may become COVID-19 positive is real but that the school and community is going to get through this together, he said. Students need to know that it’s OK if they must quarantine at home for a couple weeks and attend class virtually so they don’t see it as punitive or negative.
“There are many mixed feelings and hot emotions about this,” Genisot said. “We have to do our best to assure kids because as adults we struggle to process this image, and so what’s it like for a child to process everything they’re hearing? It’s very challenging and scary.”
