Using Humor to Get Through Covid

Molly Holub jokingly calls her husband Karl “the publicist for our family, because he’s always reporting everything on Facebook.”

That might be true, but for the past couple of weeks, Karl’s posts have been about more than fun family stories. They’ve actually kept him engaged with the world while the coronavirus kept him isolated and quarantined.

It started on June 18, when Karl, a property manager, posted this on Facebook: “Surprised and disappointed to announce the following: I tested positive for Covid on Monday. (Molly and the kids all tested negatively.)”

The positive test was a surprise to the family. “He was feeling bad, but he didn’t have a fever or a cough,” Molly says. “On Friday he had a headache and a runny nose. Saturday he went to the doctor, who told him he had sinusitis and to take some Flonase. Then a friend who is a doctor at Texas Children’s advised him to get tested anyway, so on Monday we did. He tested positive."

In the interim, meaning after he was told he had sinusitis and before the friend suggested a coronavirus test, Karl saw several friends. “I wore an R95 mask [what painters use], but none of them had masks on. They all tested negative. My mask saved them.”

Molly says telling people was a challenge. “It was awful having to call people and say, ‘Oh, so sorry, Karl tested positive,’” she says. “It’s like the 'lice call' times 100. We had to email the head coach of the Memorial High School football team, and he shut the whole program down. Then the entire world knows it’s us, and it’s like six degrees of separation from the Holubs. ‘My kid doesn’t know [Molly and Karl’s son Chance], but he played basketball with that other kid who’s friends with him…’ Eventually more people started testing positive, but initially it was pretty bad.”

When Karl posted his first Facebook update, he had just settled in to his quarantine digs, an empty apartment he manages on Kirby. He was looking at a long two weeks ahead, expecting to be there, alone, for the duration. “It was really a blessing that we had that little place available,” Karl says. “It was on the market, and we just took it off.”

He says the Facebook posts grew from a desire to let people know that he was okay. “I realize a lot of people would be hesitant to share their medical information like that, but I’m my own boss, and my family was negative,” he says. “I thought I could maybe help some people who were going to be going through this and let them know you don’t have to be in the hospital with it.”

The day after his initial Covid post, June 19, Karl posted a graphic: “I embrace each day with gratitude.” This was the real start of Karl’s Covid chronicle on Facebook.

Throughout, he posted inspirational graphics like, “Thankfulness is the beginning of my happiness,” and, “I keep the door open for blessings,” and, “I am grateful for words of encouragement,” and, “I am grateful for the healing that is going on in my body.”

He chose the motivational quotes from the positive messages an app called I Am would send him throughout the day. “I was trying to shift my energy,” he says. “If you’re not careful, you’ll worry yourself into oblivion. That app pinged a message to me every two or three hours. It seems silly, but you’ve got to get some sort of message other than the news, which says you’re gonna die.”

On Day 5, Karl said he’d lost track of the days. 

“You just keep waking up, and you’ve got a family at home, and I felt like I was on a trip and had missed my connecting flight, but it felt like that for two weeks,” he says. “It’s just really, really odd to be in the same place as your family but not be able to see them.”

Karl says hanging family photos on the bare walls of his apartment was a lifesaver. “That lifted my spirits,” he wrote. “Battling boredom and bad attitude, so I’ll work on both today.”

On “Day 137 (or Day 8 of being in corporate apartment/quarantine-for real),” Karl took a cue from Tom Hanks in Cast Away and made a friend: a tennis ball he named Penn. He updated his Facebook profile picture; now it’s Penn the tennis ball/friend. “Obviously I didn’t have a volleyball, but I did have a tennis ball in my trunk,” Karl says. “It started as a joke to keep my mind off of things, and then Penn became his own thing.” On Karl’s Facebook, we see Penn listening to the '80s song "Alone by Heart": “’Till now, I always got by on my own.” 

Netflix became another friend, introducing Karl to some new interests: “I’m not sure if it’s the Covid or what,” he wrote on Facebook, “but 'Magnetic' on Netflix has some of the most amazing big wave surfing footage using drones. It’s wild; recommend it.” After that, he reported having the same dream for several nights, that he was swimming, and his family was, too, but he couldn’t quite swim fast enough to reach them. “I guess my Netflix watching merged with my anxieties on that.”

He also wound up watching Cagney and Lacey, which he hadn’t seen in 30 years. The background music was Phil Collins and Sting singing “Long Long Way to Go.” Karl wrote, “Maybe it’s a message from the universe. Think I would have rather heard ‘Take Me Home’ by Phil instead.”

Dinners devolved to Hungry Man Country Fried Chicken TV dinners. “I have truly lost all sense of taste and smell, so who cares?” he wrote. “Penn being a gentleman offered to eat my green beans.”

On what he calls his lowest day, Karl took Penn to Galveston. “I really wanted to go home Friday and had already packed, but then my test came back positive. I couldn’t sit there anymore.” He wrote: “Day 511 (or Day 13/12B, for superstition). “I showed Penn: Molly’s house where she grew up; Moody Gardens; my job as a tennis pro at Galveston Health and Racquet Club (not the Shlitterbahn office and parking lot), where I met Molly; my view from my apartment; Galveston Country Club, where I played golf every Friday (we met a pelican there, yes, a real one); the beach, of course, but we stayed 30 yards from humans; Trinity Episcopal Church where Molly and I got married. It was a fun trip down memory lane. Penn now wants to see Molly even more.”

After two weeks, Karl is delighted to be home with his family, everyone healthy. “That was a real learning curve on what you appreciate in life,” Karl says. “I know there are people who are very sick, but for me, it was just groundhog day. It wasn’t that bad, it was just really boring and stressful.

“If anybody needs a friend in Penn, I’m happy to drop one off.”