14 minute read
Craving Human Connection
Story by EMMA KENNER Layout by EMMA KENNER Photo by LAURA NAVARRO
Human touch can be taken for granted. A handshake when greeting a friend, the accidental brush of two hands together, a gentle kiss on the lips. For some, COVID-19 has prevented even the slightest of touches. For others, through cleanliness practices, touch has been lessened but not eradicated.
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Eva Dingwall has always been aware of how much contact means to her. For her, hugging her daughter, shaking hands with her pastor, and kissing her husband is as natural as breathing. In June, as she sat with her feet in a rushing stream as the sun baked over her, Eva had never considered what it would be like to live without human contact. In July, she was wondering if she would ever experience it again.
In March 2020, COVID-19 arrived in the United States and it seemed the world came to a halt. Jobs, friends and family members were lost. For Eva, she was one of the lucky few to remain relatively untouched. Eva is an Administrative Associate at Tech and Greg Dingwall, Eva’s husband, is a band director in Livingston. The couple quietly finished the school year online and spent their summer together.
Through the summer, Eva and her family enjoyed church youth groups and summer band camps. During one of the camps, Eva’s daughter Sarah encountered a student who wasn’t feeling well but quickly explained away all the symptoms. On July 31st, Eva’s husband Greg made the decision to test for COVID-19. That same day, Eva went to work and then to a prayer meeting. “During this season of life, it’s been very important to us to be at prayer and to fight the good fight of faith,” she said.
At the church, everyone wore masks, social-distanced, and avoided contact. Everyone but Eva’s grandson who managed to sneak in a hug for his grandmother. On August
1steverything changed. While running errands, her body started shaking, racking her with stomach cramps. As her body was pouring sweat, she urgently called her daughter and asked for help.
Eva quickly made it her daughter’s house. When her body finally relented its attack, she felt relief until she looked down. The smell of iron hit her nose instantly and all she could see was blood. In the moment, it was easy to assume something she ate. Making her way home, she insisted everyone keep their distance. Exhausted, she knew she needed rest. As her conditions worsened, a trip to a local urgent care was in order, and on Sunday Aug. 2nd, Eva and her husband entered quarantine. She wondered how this would impact her day to day. She asked herself, “This thing is basically just the flu, right?”
The next day the results of her COVID-19 test came back positive, and on the following day her taste was fading and her fever dreams began. This is when the struggle for breath began.
Knowing this was more than just the flu, Greg quickly
packed a bag, helped Eva into his big blue Ford truck and rushed her to the ER. Patiently waiting in line, she couldn’t avoid worrying for those around her.
“I would say to the people around me, please I have COVID, do not come near me,” she said.
After hours of cold needles, X-rays, and temperature checks, she was finally taken to the COVID ward.
“I was miserable but they did everything they could to try to make me comfortable.” she said.
As the night wore on, nurses passed by in a blur. Eventually one nurse asked another if Eva even needed a monitor, doubting that she was truly as sick as she claimed. This question was standard practice but it still caught her off guard. The shock washed over Eva as she heard the speculation in the nurse’s voice. She couldn’t help but wonder, how sick was she really?
Toward the end of another day, it hit her how lonely she was. Since she entered the hospital, she hadn’t seen anyone’s entire face or even had skin to skin contact. In those dark hours, her only comfort was the cold, latex hand of a nurse- a sign that someone else was there, she was not alone.
“That touch was critical for me. God built us to need one another’s touch. Not just the heat, but contact with one another,” she said. Those signs of comfort were what she held onto. During the day, she had two nurses. The nights were much harder. As she laid on her scratchy sheets, she slowly waited for the night to pass. She stared at the clock that wasn’t moving as her body attacked her with cramps, sweating and rising temperatures.
As the days passed, her symptoms worsened. Her lungs filled with blood. Sitting up in bed brought waves of dizziness, and visions of stars and black rings. Drinking Ensure helped with the nourishment and IVs battled dehydration, however, by the next day, Eva was slipping even further into the clutches of the coronavirus.
As she laid in her cold, white room she was struggling to do any of the breathing exercises. The doctors were encouraging her to use a breathing apparatus machine and to get her number on the machine up to 2,500. Eva could barely hit 250. The doctors tried everything they could to help her realize the reality of her situation. In that moment, Eva broke. With tears streaming down her face, struggling to breath, she looked at the doctor and uttered words she never wanted to say out loud, “I’m scared.” Suddenly she felt the comforting touch of a cold latex hand on her shoulder. She turned and asked the doctor, “Am I dying?”
One week into her time in the hospital, Eva was taken into the ICU as her lungs filled slowly with fluid. Her memory of the ICU is cloudy and in snippets. The hospital staff did everything in their power to keep her off of a ventilator. To keep her temperature down, she was constantly covered in wet cloths. At some point, her family was finally able to Facetime her. The calls, texts and photos Eva received helped to keep her going. After hearing from the doctors how serious Eva’s condition was, Greg sent out an all call to everyone they knew, begging for prayers. Her husband was terrified. Their church family, who lovingly call her “Momma Eva,” were terrified. Texts, calls and prayers started pouring in almost instantly. Every night, lying in her bed, Eva would fiercely quote scripture. In those dark, lonely moments, everything felt surreal and disconnected and yet she felt fully surrounded in a blanket of love, scripture and prayer.
After many days of trials and tribulations, her healing began. Little by little her conditions improved. She regained her sense of taste. The dizziness had begun to clear, and on Saturday, Aug. 16th, Eva left the ICU.
Now in November, she is still not fully recovered. There are still days she wakes up breathless and fatigued. On her best days, she describes feeling “95% herself.” Despite still fighting a battle to a complete recovery, she is just happy to enjoy something as common as human touch.
Tech Construction:
The Burj Khalifa is the world’s tallest building stand- walked with the university through various construction ing at 2,717 feet. Considered to be a feat of engineer- projects over the past years. ing it took six years to build. Big accomplishments often “We’re responsible, generically speaking, for all the rentake time and have their drawbacks. ovation and construction on campus,” Cobb said.
Since 2016 Tech has Cobb and his colcompleted eight large construction projects that have added buildings to campus or renovated them as well as various smaller projects. “ leagues also coordinate efforts for the Campus Master Plan which lays out a vision for renovation and construction on Tech’s At the end of 2020 costs for projects will The question must be asked, have campus for the next thirty years. total close to $250 million according to the school the benefits out-weighed the losses? According to the Master Plan, a major initiative website. The construction of the update refinements presence on campus has meant the renovation and addition of new buildings but also a loss of parking spaces and traffic flow. The question must be asked, have the benefits out-weighed the is the greening of the campus. This includes a progressive series of projects to maximize the green space opportunities and, in most cases, includes the removal, modification or elimina” losses? tion of parking spaces.
Director of Capital Projects and Planning, Jim Cobb, has One of the things that this plan includes is moving cam-
The new science building is on what used to be a red zone parking lot for students.
10 | Eagle Eye
The Never Ending Story
Story by LOGAN STALEY
Layout and Photos by SHELBY CAMPBELL
pus parking to the exterior of campus. Tech has broken up the different parking areas around campus into different zones: perimeter parking (purple), residential parking (green), student premium parking (red), employee premium parking (gold), Tech Village parking (teal), and motorcycle parking (pink). The cheapest on-campus parking pass for commuters is the red pass for $215. The purple parking pass is $129 with available parking behind the intramural fields or behind Tech Village.
Hadley Taylor, a senior Tech student who commutes from Baxter, TN expresses her opinion about Tech parking. “I haven’t bought a red parking pass since my freshman year, because for me the free parking around campus is just as close as the red parking pass spots, so it really makes no difference for me to buy a red pass when I could just park around campus for free,” Taylor said.
Cobb said that his team is working on sixteen large projects and twenty-five smaller projects right now. “All our projects are beneficial, but I think the ones that have the biggest impact for the students are the ones that the students can see and the ones that the students can utilize,” he said. “I’ve heard Dr. Oldham say multiple times… when they survey students and ask them questions about, ‘Why did you pick this university or that university?’ The appearance of the campus is one of the top three answers every time,” Cobb said. Cobb believes that to accomplish this, the university must limit parking in the core of campus and move it to the perimeter. The renovation of buildings and efforts to make the campus more “park-like” will aid in the effort to make Tech a more attractive campus.
Top: This grassy area outside the RUC used to be a parking lot. Bottom: A closer look shows patio tables, a firepit and a walkway.
Left: This dirt pit has been a staple on centennial plaza the Fall 2020 semester.
Life’s Crushing Weight
Written by LOGAN STALEY Layout by EMMA KENNER Photo courtesty of ISAAC REFF
“Mom...I’m okay. I think I just broke my legs,” Isaac Reff said over the phone.
“Oh, Isaac,” his mom said in an irritable yet worried tone.
The smell of exhaust, mud, and grass blew coolly on this October night. Reff had just flipped a 1000 pound offroad vehicle and snapped both of his femurs, yet he remained calm. What was the end of an ordinary Thursday night was the beginning of a painful and near deadly two- month journey.
Reff stands at six feet tall, and is a fairly muscular, hairy man. His favorite exercise in the gym is back squats and most of his time is spent reading theology books. He now attends The Southern Theological Seminary and graduated from Tech with a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering in December 2019. The night of his wreck, Reff was two months away from graduation, and as a “super senior,” he was ready. On that night, Reff and his friend Noah Agee found themselves with their pastor’s son riding off-road vehicles on his farm.
“It’s got a brand new motor in it, so you can’t take off really fast or drive really fast or you could mess it up,” Sam Mckinney, the pastor’s son said. He got out of the vehicle and let Reff take control and Agee into the passenger seat. He accelerated, and as they were mentioning how fast it was, the vehicle started flipping. Agee’s first instinct was to jump out of the vehicle and Reff remained. They were flung out and Reff landed on his back, and the vehicle soon landed right on the middle of his thighs, crushing his femurs. At first, he was calm and realized that he had to get it off of him. Sitting up he grabbed the 1000 pound machine and pushed it off of him. At the same time, Pastor Scott Mckinney came up over the hill with his headlights shining brightly in their eyes. Help had come. “I’m going to need an ambulance,” Reff said. Pastor Mckinney seemed to be hoping that this wouldn’t be a big deal and they could just put him in the truck. Reff tried to get up but felt his now disconnected femurs grind against each other with excruciating pain. They called the ambulance and his parents and headed to Cookeville Regional Medical Center to assess the damage with a CT scan. Both of his femurs had been broken, and staff of CRMC decided he would need to be transferred for surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He and his parents decided to fly him to the hospital that night. In surgery they placed a titanium rod in each of his legs and connected the broken bones with screws. The next day he was standing beside his hospital bed.
Life’s Crushing Weight
Isaac Reff had a strong support system in his friends and family but most importantly in his church.
Reff spent the next few days in the hospital to make sure everything was working properly, and things seemed to be improving until Sunday. He began having difficulty breathing, and his chest began to feel “sticky”. They increased his oxygen level to help him, but things were not getting better. He felt something in his throat that he almost swallowed, but he coughed it up. It was blood.
They immediately moved him to the ICUwhere they began to treat him for blood clots in the lungs. Family and friends worried about his condition. What was a successful surgery aimed at a quick recovery became another near death experience. The treatment was successful and he spent two weeks recovering in the hospital. After all of these complications his doctor told him he was fortunate to make it through this.
As a senior chemical engineer, Reff had missed a great deal of school—enough to hinder his chances at graduating in December. He was bound to a wheelchair and walker for a few weeks. Walking and everyday tasks were difficult to complete. He needed help to get to class on time, and try to catch up on all of the assignments he had missed while he was gone. His teachers were very understanding, and one teacher said, “I usually never make exceptions, but I think you deserve this.” Over the next few weeks, Reff was able to catch up on his assignments, and went on to graduate from Tech. He was even able to walk across the stage, almost passing out, but doing it nonetheless.
Reff’s takeaways from all of this were ones that deepened his appreciation for life and for what Jesus Christ had done for him. He realized that he could have been killed several times. If the off-road vehicle landed any higher or lower, he could have been dead. He also could have died in the hospital if the blood clots had gone to his brain or if he would have stopped breathing.
Ultimately, the most important thing he learned was a small degree of the physical pain that Jesus endured for him on the cross. He said breaking his legs was the most excruciating pain he had ever felt and made him more thankful for the work of Christ on the cross.
Reff feels that he still hasn’t completely processed the events that occurred. He realized that he could have easily died multiple times, but in the end he believes God was the one who kept him from death.
