For ex-Wildwood Crest resident, stay-at-home order a matter of life and death

The Wildwood Crest native endured cancer and a double lung transplant to make it to that celebration.

Now, she wants everybody to treat the COVID-19 pandemic like she does — a matter of life and death.

Mulholland, like countless others with pre-existing conditions, is especially vulnerable to the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

“If people could stop and think about how hard I’ve fought to make it to 30 years old,” she said in a phone interview Tuesday morning. “By you staying home, you are also saving my life.”

After growing up and living in Wildwood Crest, Mulholland moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, last year. Her health problems began at age 9, when she started receiving radiation and chemotherapy treatments to battle a cancerous Wilms tumor on her kidney.

After going into remission, doctors discovered the cancer spread to her lungs. When she was 15, Mulholland underwent a double lung transplant.

Even in the best of times, she must watch her immune system and protect herself against disease and sickness.

But with the pandemic, she’s been in almost a complete quarantine the past three weeks. She has not been to a store or any indoor social setting since the beginning of March.

“It’s definitely one of the hardest things I’ve had to do,” she said. “It’s a very lonely thing. I’m the only one allowed in my (apartment) right now.”

Mulholland works from home as a personal assistant for an organization that helps build charter schools. She has her groceries delivered and is constantly cleaning her apartment.

She ventures out a few times a day to walk her dog, River, a blue heeler-German shepherd mix, in a park near her apartment. The two cover about six miles each day.

“Just to keep my sanity,” she said.

Mulholland takes plenty of precautions before, during and after those walks.

She uses her shoe to hit the buttons on the elevator in her apartment building. When she returns home, she immediately throws her clothes in the washing machine and jumps in the shower.

Mulholland has also kept up with her daily yoga routine, a practice that helps her both mentally and physically.

“That has been a huge thing to kind of chill myself out,” she said. “I get on my mat and try to leave this behind.”

On Monday to celebrate her birthday, she took a walk on a Chattanooga river bridge, ordered Thai food and hung out with friends on the banks of the Tennessee River.

“We kept our distance in-between,” she said. “I have an incredible group of friends (in Tennessee) that I consider family.”

Mulholland also constantly hears from friends and family in Wildwood.

“I have to tell you how incredible FaceTime is,” she said. “Everybody is always checking in on me. That’s been a huge help.”

Mulholland knows she’s doing everything she can to protect herself.

“That’s the No. 1 thing I keep going back to,” she said. “I really am taking this very seriously.”

But what Mulholland and others in her position need is for everybody to take the pandemic as seriously as she does. The other day as she walked her dog she saw a group of people playing touch football and wondered what they were thinking.

She reads on social media people questioning the need for strict stay-at-home measures.

She reads people saying the number of people who have died is only a couple of thousand.

“That number,” she said, “could (include) me.”