Beat goes on | Local DJ shares lessons learned from virus battle

Jessica Hagood
Jessica Hagood

TEXARKANA - For local radio deejay Jessica Hagood, an inability to taste her morning coffee and beloved Cocoa Pebbles spelled one thing: COVID-19.

She knew it, even if she couldn't quite accept it at first.

Hagood, who has recently talked openly on social media about her experience with the coronavirus, discovered one recent morning that she couldn't taste the banana in her muffins. Then she couldn't taste the cereal she ate, and she couldn't taste or smell her coffee.

She sensed it then, that she had COVID-19.

"My neighbor made me some banana nut muffins, and I took a bite of it," Hagood recalled. She knew the banana was there, but she couldn't taste it. She had a feeling this was different.

"It wasn't like I burnt my tongue. It wasn't like I have a cold," Hagood remembers. "It was a different feeling."

But she was in denial, she admits, throughout the day. Her nightly, yummy Cocoa Pebbles were the same: no taste of the cocoa. On the phone with her husband, local musician Greg Hagood, he paused and was, she said, like "What?"

And her coffee the next morning?

"All I could taste was the sweetness of the creamer," she said. "My stomach just dropped. I was scared, very scared." It's like when a family prepares for something but they don't think it's really going to happen, as she put it.

When she tried to smell her perfume, which her husband bought for her, it was the same. "I sprayed it on my wrist: nothing," Hagood said.

The emotion of the moment is quick to come back to her. She called Greg; she knew he'd urge her to get tested.

Hagood made the appointment at a local clinic. Her nose was swabbed (both nostrils), a quick process.

"I want people to know that it's going to be OK, and a lot of people are scared of the test," Hagood said.

She said it wasn't that bad. "It reminded me of when you're a kid and you suck up the swimming pool chlorine in your nose, you know," she said.

Hagood knew what the result would be.

"That was as scared as I've ever been, the day of my appointment, and then three or four days later the day that I got my results. I got anxiety that day, as well. Other than those two days, my anxiety has not been present," Hagood said. "I owe a lot of that to my friends, family and my listeners, my Facebook people, honestly."

She and Greg said that if they were to ever get COVID-19, they'd go public. For one thing, she'd want people to know in case she forgot she'd been around them.

People have reached out to her privately to say they got over the virus, and folks reached out to say they think they have it. She's reassured them. It'll be OK.

"I try to keep it positive. I don't want people to be scared," Hagood said. As for symptoms of the disease, they've been mild for her.

"I've had light headaches here and there. The past three nights in a row I've these weird body pains I've never had in my life," she said Thursday. It was something that felt different, almost like the bone and muscle are aching. "Tylenol is all I can take right now and it's not taking away the pain, so that sucked."

To her, COVID-19 feels like a bit like her allergies. She says she's hard on herself with her health, which she knows isn't good. Overall, though, her symptoms have been mild - "thank God," she says.

When the novel coronavirus pandemic first started, she remained vigilant about wearing a mask and practicing social distancing. Then it changed.

"Whenever, I would say, things around me were becoming more lax, that is whenever I became more lax. Because, why not? In that two week period when I was not washing my hands as often, I was not wearing a mask as often, I was not social distancing as I was before, I contracted COVID," Hagood said.

She wasn't going out to eat, but she was going to the grocery store. Now, she says, she knows there's a no-contact way to get groceries. She aims to make a video about it. She wants to help people now and make them aware.

"I'll help as much as I can," Hagood said.

She's no fan of people being quick to judge, and she says she can't be sure where she got it.

"But I can say what I've done wrong, and I can encourage people as much as they hate it - and I hate that they hate it - but wearing a mask is your inconvenience. Their inconvenience, people that don't like it. But it's not significant when there are people dying alone," Hagood said.

Dying alone, that was her biggest fear - before she showed symptoms or was diagnosed. "Leaving my kids before they're grown," Hagood said.

She admits she doesn't like to wear a mask, but what does it hurt, she says? She wants people to be kind to one another. "I just want people to be selfless," Hagood said.

It's been about two weeks since she tested positive, and now her smell and taste are slowly returning, but she admits she's missed the smell of yeast, which she couldn't detect in the pizza she ate. She's only been able to taste a little bit of salt and sugar, plus very hot pepper.

"I'm still showing symptoms," she said, and she expects to be retested soon. It will be good to know, she says.

Hagood has also worked from home, a lifeline through the illness. You can still hear her voice at Texarkana Radio Center stations 101.7, 99.3 and 105.1 as a Hot FM deejay.

For Hagood, being able to share music and connect with her many fans has helped keep her spirits positive through COVID.

"My listeners, they're my friends - you know, how when you're a kid you have imaginary friends, like my stuffed animals and stuff?" Hagood said. She thinks of them as friends and family. Love, that's what she feels for them. "I talk to them every day. Seven days a week. I don't want them to be upset. I don't want them to worry about me."

Her boss figured out a way she could work from home, so she really hasn't missed a beat with the radio work.

"That has definitely made my spirits higher," Hagood said, noting her advice for folks is something her mom taught her.

"Listen to your body. If your body is saying sit down or if your body is saying rest, rest," Hagood said.

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