COVID-19 isn’t thought to be as dangerous for young adults as it is for older people, but that doesn’t mean an infection comes without consequences.

Three otherwise healthy Alabama millennials talk about how the coronavirus upended their lives, from painful symptoms to ER visits to separation for weeks from family members.

Hannah Alexander, 28, of Huntsville, said having COVID-19 was one of the most difficult experiences of her life.

Huntsville: Hannah, 28

Five days after Hannah Alexander’s symptoms began, she wondered for the first time whether she might die.

“This was the most brutal thing I’ve been through in my whole life,” she said. “I was surprised at how it affected me because I’m young and I don’t have any chronic underlying conditions that would fit into that high-risk category.

It was late at night and the 28-year-old lay alone in her bed, isolated on the second floor of her parents’ house. The body aches and fever of the previous days had given way to severe chest pain and what felt like spasms in her chest. She couldn’t get a full breath.

It terrified her.

“It felt like I was about to have a heart attack or my lungs were going to collapse,” said Alexander, who lives in Huntsville. “Under normal circumstances I would have woken everyone in the house and called 911. But because I knew I likely had this virus, I didn’t know if it would be OK for me to go to the hospital. What was severe enough?”

She didn’t want to unnecessarily expose her parents, who are at high risk of complications, or healthcare workers.

She was awake for hours. Eventually the spasms and chest pain faded.

A week before, Alexander had felt fine. She and a friend rode together in Alexander’s car for what Alexander described as essential volunteer work, serving a vulnerable population. They washed hands, used hand sanitizer, didn’t touch each other, and didn’t come into direct contact with the people they served, she said. They thought they’d done everything right.

But then her friend became ill a few days later and tested positive for the virus.

“We just had no idea that she was carrying this,” Alexander said. “We never touched each other, but in this case, it was airborne.”

By that time, Alexander had started to feel like she might have a cold. She went to get tested herself at Huntsville Hospital’s drive-thru testing site at Joe Davis Stadium, then open but currently shuttered due to lack of testing supplies.

While she waited for test results, Alexander called into work and got permission to work from home. She isolated herself on the second floor of her parents’ house, while they occupied the first floor.

Once, during a tornado warning, she had to come downstairs to hide in a closet. Her parents sheltered in a different closet.

Fever and body aches followed the severe congestion, along with a loss of taste and smell. Then that late-night episode of chest pain that nearly made her call 911. A day later, it was nausea and what Alexander described as the worst headache of her life.

A week after her symptoms began, she once again had chest pain with an accelerated heart rate. This time, her arms, feet and lips went numb. Her mother called the paramedics.

By the time they arrived, her legs were numb as well, and they took her by ambulance to the emergency room.

Hospital staff wore N95 masks, goggles and gowns over their scrubs when treating her.

“I had been at home trying to tough this out by myself, not knowing anything and not understanding what was happening to me,” she said. “I was just glad to be in a place where people knew what they were doing and could assess my situation.”

She was discharged hours later after a clear chest x-ray, and was sent home with medication. The next day she finally got that long-awaited test result – she was positive for COVID-19.

Alexander prayed each day and communicated through social media with friends and family. Members of her church drove to her neighborhood to do a “park and pray” for her recovery.

“I’ve had so many people reach out to me, encourage me and ask how I’m doing,” she said. “People have brought food and vitamins, all kinds of wonderful things. It has warmed my heart.”

Her symptoms lessened over the following week. She’s been symptom-free for the past couple of days now, and expects to come out of isolation by the end of the week. The first thing she plans to do is to take a walk around her neighborhood in the fresh air.

“People need to behave in a way as if they could be carrying it, even if they don’t have symptoms,” she said. “You may have this and not know it.”

Jimmy Johnson, 28, from Jefferson County had to live in a hotel room for more than two weeks while isolated because of the coronavirus.

Birmingham: Jimmy, 29

Jimmy Johnson has been living in a hotel room for nearly four weeks. The 29-year-old Jefferson County resident hasn’t gone home in that time so he wouldn’t infect his roommate.

“I basically live in hotels for my work, but these four walls are closing in,” he said. “It’s a nice hotel room, but it’s crazy to be in one room with no human contact for this long.”

Johnson first felt ill a couple of weeks ago, while on a business trip in Washington, D.C. He works for a company building LED video walls and travels nearly every week of the year.

At the time, he couldn’t get tested in D.C. because he didn’t fit the testing criteria.

“So that Friday, I rented a car and drove home,” he said. Once he got to Birmingham, he rented a hotel room, where he’s been ever since, except leaving briefly to get tested for COVID-19 at a local urgent care clinic.

His doctor called last week to let him know his test was positive. He’d have to be in isolation for 14 days from the start of his symptoms.

“I had a very mild case,” said Johnson. A sore throat, cough, fever and a bad headache were his only symptoms. “I only had symptoms for four days and they were mild, not even enough to be annoying.”

Johnson is used to travelling – he’s been to Paris and Hawaii since November – but now works from his hotel room. His roommate brings him food and leaves it outside his door.

“When I heard I had (coronavirus), I was more worried about passing it on to someone who would be really hurt by it,” Johnson said. “It’s serious for a lot of folks and the whole ‘flatten the curve’ idea makes sense. And I don’t want the hospitals to be overrun.”

Johnson said his younger brother, who lives in Cullman, also tested positive for COVID-19. They hadn’t seen each other in person in a couple of months, and so likely didn’t transmit it to each other.

But Johnson said his brother’s case was much worse; he couldn’t leave his bed for days.

Johnson’s 14 days of isolation are up at the end of the week. He plans to spray everything he owns with disinfecting spray and “Lysol-bomb” his car before finally heading home.

“Everybody should just stay at home if at all possible,” said Johnson.

Shanterica Splunge, 29, of Montgomery was diagnosed with coronavirus in mid-March had had to stay isloated from her husband and children.

Montgomery: Shanterica, 29

The day Shanterica Splunge learned she was infected with COVID-19, she started a Facebook Live stream video about her diagnosis. Wearing a mask, the 29-year-old urged friends and acquaintances to take the virus seriously. She said she regretted traveling the week before to visit a friend in Savannah, and regretted thinking that she wasn’t likely to catch it.

She said at that time, in mid-March, there were rumors going around Facebook that African Americans weren’t as likely to get the virus.

“In my mind, I’d started to think, I haven’t heard of any African Americans that have this virus,” said Splunge. “It seemed like, the culture could not be touched. I was the first person I knew in this area that got it.”

Her video has 10,000 views and more than 500 comments.

“One reason I made my video was because I was so frustrated, seeing people would still go to barbecues and go to church,” said Splunge, who lives in Montgomery. “People think, it’s not going to touch me because I live in a small town or because nobody at the barbecue has it.”

She began feeling slightly ill while visiting a friend in Savannah, Ga. over St. Patrick’s Day weekend. She thinks she may have been infected while attending a funeral in Detroit the week before.

She took a bus from Savannah home to Montgomery and went straight to the hospital when she arrived.

As Jackson Hospital in Montgomery, Splunge asked staff if she’d be tested for coronavirus. It was March 16. Schools had just closed for an initial two weeks, but Alabama had yet to issue strict orders about gatherings or sheltering in place. The state had fewer than 30 coronavirus cases at the time.

Staff initially told her they wouldn't need to test her, but later said they would. Two nurses came in wearing full protective gear and swabbed the inside of her nose.

“It felt like I was an alien that came from outer space,” Splunge said. “They taped my door so people knew not to come in. If I had to go to the bathroom, I had to let them know and everybody would have to clear the hallway.

“I started getting really scared. I was kind of freaking out, thinking about my kids and my husband.”

After the test, staff sent her home with ibuprofen. She isolated herself in the back bedroom at her house while her husband stayed in the front room with their twin 2-year-olds.

“I was laying down and I could feel the room spinning, like my body was moving but I wasn’t,” she said. Parts of her body would feel numb. She had a fever, a cough and severe congestion.

Three days after her trip to the hospital, a nurse called to tell her that her test was positive for COVID-19.

She asked what she should do, and the nurse said he wasn’t sure what to tell her, she recalled. He gave her two numbers to call – the CDC and the Alabama Department of Public Health. Splunge first told her husband and asked him to send their twins to stay with her mom.

Then she dialed the CDC, crying. She said the person who answered asked why she’d been told to call, and told her to call the department of public health. She did. The ADPH told her to call her doctor, which she did.

Then she made the Facebook Live video. Some on social media were supportive, but others remained skeptical that she could be COVID-19 positive, she said.

A few even questioned her faith.

“I’ve heard it all,” she said. “Some people think, well, she’s not a child of God because she got the virus, or that she doesn’t know Christ and that’s why the virus touched her.”

She and her family are active in worship and music ministry at a local church, and Splunge said she’s missed being able to sing at church.

Her doctor has called every other day to check on her, she said, prescribing anti-nausea medication and instructions for using over-the-counter medication to keep her fever in check. She’s had muscle spasms and body aches; one time the right side of her body went numb.

She has FaceTime calls with her kids each day. Her mother told her that the twins ask to watch a video of their dad, a musician, playing the saxophone each night before bed.

Her husband passes her food and medicine through an adjoining door to the couple’s bathroom and worked to keep the house disinfected.

But now, two weeks after the onset of her symptoms, Splunge said she still can’t quite shake the fever.

She wants to be retested to see if she’s negative or not, but her doctor so far has not been able to find a test.

Until she can get tested or her symptoms disappear for several days, she said, her doctor advised her not to bring her children home. She hasn’t seen them in three weeks.

She said she still sees on social media people going to church and meeting together.

“In the Bible it talks about respecting your leaders,” she said. “That’s what me and my family are standing on. Just do what the officials say. Stay in your home.”