TEXARKANA -- For radio deejay Jessica Hagood, an inability to taste her morning coffee and beloved Cocoa Pebbles spelled one thing: covid-19 infection.
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.
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"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 remembered. "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, 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
When the novel coronavirus pandemic first started, Hagood 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'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 sense of smell and taste are slowly returning.
"I'm still showing symptoms," she said, and she expects to be retested soon. It will be good to know, she says.
Hagood also has worked from home, a lifeline through the illness. Her voice can still be heard at Texarkana Radio Center-owned stations KBYB 101.7 FM, K257FY (KBYB) 99.3 FM and KTTY 105.1 FM.
Hagood has some advice, 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.