AISA director learns first hand of COVID virus

Michael McClendon hands out the state championship trophy to the Macon East volleyball team last fall. The AISA director has dealt with COVID-19 since late May. (File Photo)

By TIM GAYLE

Michael McLendon has had to deal with coronavirus since the beginning of March.

The Alabama Independent School Association executive director has had to make decisions about the private school organization’s members and its sports activities, monitoring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state Department of Public Health and the state Department of Education for COVID-19 updates and information. 

In late May, however, his perspective on COVID-19 took on a different meaning when McLendon discovered he had the virus.

He had just had a conversation with the office staff about taking precautions and not coming to work sick. The timing, as it turned out, was perfect. During the Memorial Day weekend, his family all started showing signs of an illness.  

“We had a fever and it didn’t go away,” he said. “We ended up getting tested that week. It took six days to get the results back, so by the time I got the results back I was already about 10 days in. Had it not been for those conversations, I never would have missed a day or work. Probably wouldn’t have tested my temperature. But because of the heightened awareness, I did. We did the right thing. We actually stayed home a week longer than advised.”

Like many people who are diagnosed with COVID-19, the anticipation was worse than the reality. McLendon never knew what the coming days would bring.

“You’re always thinking I feel OK, but what’s tomorrow going to feel like,” he said. “I was riding up toward the lake toward the end of it and my chest started hurting. I was like, is this the turning point? But it never happened. The biggest symptom consistent throughout the whole thing was fatigue, significant fatigue. My fever only got to 100 one time.”

Throughout the pandemic, the symptoms often change as doctors learn more about the virus. He thought one of the telltale signs of the coronavirus was a temperature of 100.4 degree, yet his never reached that point.

“I keep telling everyone you’d better throw that out the window,” he said. “Both (he and his wife’s) temperatures stayed around 99.5, 99.8, something like that. What was stuck in my head was 100.4, but mine never got that high.”

Another change in his mindset came after he battled through the illness. As friends and colleagues learned he had the virus, he started getting phone calls from people wanting to know what to expect. Now, more than a month removed from his battle with coronavirus, he’s learned another part of dealing with the virus. 

“You have a different understanding,” McLendon said. “One of the things nobody ever talks about is the effects afterward and how other people treat you. I can’t tell you how many times if it comes up, people go, ‘Whoa.’ They start backing up. It’s been over a month since I’ve been involved with it, but people don’t know how to react to it.

“I went to a dentist’s appointment the other day and one of the questions is, ‘have you been around anyone with coronavirus?’ Yeah, I had it. They don’t know how to respond to you from that point on. I got turned away because they didn’t know what to do with it.”

As the nation tries to come to grips with the deadly virus, McLendon knows that nothing short of a vaccine will stop the difficult decisions that lie ahead. If anyone is infected with the virus in school or during extracurricular activities, the danger is probably greater within the infected person’s immediate family. 

“That’s how we got it,” he said. “Other than the fatigue, it wasn’t that bad. I could have gotten to a point where I said, ‘I don’t feel that bad, I must be OK, so I’m going to go to the grocery store or wherever.’ We were real cautious about isolating. We shut down.”

And that’s the key in holding down the spread of the virus. McLendon said he was infected on a Sunday and didn’t get tested until Thursday, and people have to be smart about staying isolated as much as possible. 

“I stayed isolated in between,” he said, “but a lot of people probably wouldn’t. They might go to work on Monday and Tuesday. And then you’ve got the delay between when you’re infected and when you’re actually showing symptoms, five days or so that you don’t even know you have it.”