August 16, 2022 Covid Test pt 3

My sleep felt strange, was I dreaming? In the depths of my consciousness, I felt an itch, a soreness inside. My throat tingled with a pain that woke my senses. I must be dreaming, how could I be sick? I felt great when I went to sleep. It must be a dream.

Until I opened my eyes and there it was – that feeling again. This time I knew it was real, it was an ache in my throat, a pain inside. Suddenly I sneezed. Dammit I can’t afford to get sick

Water, I needed water. 

I looked at the clock and groaned. It was 3:00 in the morning. I got up and went downstairs to look for some medicine. Maybe I can beat this thing and be better by morning. Maybe…

Morning came and I knew that maybe was wishful thinking.

I was sick. It’s just a cold, I told my wife and myself. Somehow I had a feeling it would be different. Dread crept up inside, what if it wasn’t?

Having a cold in the last two years is much different than it was in the before times. Before the coronaverse, we would get colds and we would still function. We would still do things and carry on with life. We wouldn’t be at full capacity but it wasn’t a complete stop of life.

Now my life stopped.

My wife immediately went to fear for her elderly parents. What if it was the dreaded vid? What if I had covid? What if she did too?

What if…

There was only one way to find out. I grabbed the test kit we had in our drawer and pulled it out. Let’s see, put the vial on the holder, and squeeze the liquid inside. Tilt the nose back and stick the long cue-tip thingy inside. Yuck I hate this part – it’s so confusing, there are three different ways to do the test. I chose the least invasive, I didn’t need to get brain matter to find out, did I?

The next thing to do was stick the cue-tip into the vial and squish the liquid from my nose into it then drip it onto the test strip thingy. I wonder how much the government spent developing this test and sending it out to every pharmacy to hand them out for free. Huge money has been spent in the fight against covid.

I wish this was like the old days when a cold was a cold…

It said to wait for fifteen minutes. Except it didn’t take that long, within five minutes I saw the second line appear. If you have two lines you’re positive. My heart sank and my stomach did leaps. 

Fuckin Covid.

Five days of forced isolation. It’s time to move into the suite in the garage. When I built the suite I didn’t expect it to become the isolation ward. This is the third time it has been put into use for isolation. One time I was so sick I thought for sure I had it, one time my wife did have it and now I’m in the suite writing and trying to keep my sanity.

At least my wife was negative and she could continue to function.

At least I don’t feel very sick. It is very much a summer head cold, I’m a bit tired and my head is congested but that’s it. In the before times I would have carried on like nothing was wrong. Maybe that wasn’t the thing to do, but complete isolation isn’t a big ball of fun either.

I have a trip planned to see my siblings in the Kootenays on Saturday and say goodbye to our mom by planting a tree on her ashes. My timing sucks but at least by Saturday I will be over the five-day isolation period, I hope I feel better by then.

In the meantime, I will make the most of my forced time off and catch up on some writing and maybe clean the garage. 

Sometimes things have a way of being forced on us…