Right now, the world is a little extra scary as we’re adjusting everything to attempt to keep as many people healthy from the coronavirus as possible. Studies show kids aren’t getting as many dangerous symptoms of the illness, but many are still getting sick, and parents have the extra stress of trying to keep their children and themselves healthy from this very contagious virus.
One mom knows the struggle after she caught COVID-19 and accidentally spread it to 17 of her 18 kids. These past few weeks for her have been terrifying.
Brittany Jencik and her family live near Rochester in Penfield, New York, and she had no idea she contracted the virus before it had already spread to most of her children, some of whom are adopted. She eventually became sick, but that wasn’t until she was asymptomatic for a long while.
“It’s been a tough month,” Brittany said, according to WHAM. “I had two days were I was extremely concerned that I was never going to be the same.”
Then the symptoms hit the rest of her house, and with 17 kids home at the time, all of them got sick -- a serious struggle for this recovering mama.
“Like a freight train,” is how Brittany described the situation. “It was terrifying. I was a little ahead of them in the timing of it all. I was as afraid of my life as I had ever been, and not much scares me.”
She doesn’t know how she was infected, but living in New York, the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States, it could have been almost anywhere.
It’s been a month since they all got sick, and Britany says they’re slowly on the mend.
After a month in isolation to help contain the further spread of the coronavirus, the mom is worried about the chance for the virus to run through the household again. To combat this, she had a company come in to help disinfect everything because so many people are living in the same home.
A friend offered to help and hired 12 workers, equipped with hazmat suits, to enter the home and sanitize everything.
“We will get dressed up in rubber hazmat suits,” said Matt Moreno, who owns a sanitization company. “We put on commercial grade gas masks with a cartridge that’s meant to withstand a nuclear attack.”
The family waited outside while the 12 cleaners went through all areas of the home to sanitize and disinfect.
The workers took two hours to clean up the house before the family went back inside. “I needed to know from my mama heart that I was protecting the people I love to the best extent I possibly could,” Brittany said.
About a month ago, when the family was in the thick of things, Britany posted a note on Facebook, urging people to take this pandemic seriously.
“If you’re feeling terrible, have several Covid19 symptoms, have tested negative for strep and flu, have vulnerable people in your life and have had exposure to Covid19, you still will not (at least right now) meet the criteria for getting tested,” she wrote.
“You will be told to assume you have it, quarantine, be smart and seek medical attention again if you really and truly can’t breath to the point of knowing you need to be admitted and possibly need ventilation.”
We’re so glad this mama and all of her sick kids are on the mend.
