COVID-19: This time it’s personal.
OK, as much as I didn’t want to write about COVID (or think about, or acknowledge its very existence), reader be warned. This blog is about COVID …. dammit.
My daughter, Riva, tested positive for COVID-19 today. Or rather, she finally received the diagnosis from a test she took last Saturday. This came about because she started feeling flu-like symptoms, coughing, fever, loss of taste and smell. As she had just had a flu shot the day before, we thought, “Can you, in fact, get the flu from the flu shot? I know they say you can’t, but … maybe?” We hoped for just the flu (which is not great, in and of itself), but prepared for the worse. And the worse came along.
My son and I went to get tested today, getting our brains tickled by a little brush through our nostrils. I kid. My brain was not tickled, but it was a thorough probing for sure.
My husband is going to get tested tomorrow. Of course, I believe that the rest of the household is indeed infected, and now we wait. This, not yet getting sick, but waiting to be sick, is the worst part — at least for me.
Getting sick, being sick, that’s easy. Suffering while sick, however, is not exactly my bag, baby. Actually, I don’t think it’s anyone’s bag. Giving anyone else’s druthers, who’d wouldn’t rather be rich and healthy than poor and sick?
Anyway, in an odd way, I sort of feel relieved. Never once, not since around March of this year, (no matter what I told Sammy,) did I think that were not going to catch it at some point. And now, I am even more sure that we will get it. I actually thought, and still think, that because of high degree of contagion this novel virus has, most people on the planet will get it. It’s the degree of sickness in each individual that is the only unknown (actually, not the only unknown, but one of the main unknowns).
Riva was super careful. She never took her mask off at work (she works at a high-end pet boutique — with fancy dog toys, and fancy dog beds and organic dog food). She always washed her hands throughout the day, and upon getting home from work and before leaving. The store manager was fairly careful about crowd control and physical distancing, at least when the state mandated stricter measures. Riva carried out a lot of dog food for people with drive-up…
