I made it through an entire conference being the weirdo who never took their mask off, even during group meals, and stayed COVID-free. But alas, despite taking every precaution we possibly could, COVID did finally hit our household last week.
I always worry, in the days following a school break, that a child will have caught COVID over the break and brought it back to school with them. This isn’t an unreasonable fear – we’re definitely in the minority in terms of families still taking precautions here. And this time, the fear became reality: all it took was a sick kid sitting near mine during lunch, the only time my kid is unmasked, to turn kiddo into our family’s Patient Zero. And despite making efforts to prevent within-household transmission, I was the next to fall, followed shortly thereafter by my spouse.
It certainly seems to be hitting me the hardest, which is not entirely surprising given my medical history (which is the whole reason I’ve been working so hard to avoid this scenario). I was worried about spouse, too, because he also has autoimmune issues, but he seems to be kicking it whereas I am still unable to be anything other than a lump. Kiddo’s still feeling really tired, so we’re keeping her home from school even though her school, insanely, says it’s fine to send a kid back to school after 5 days even if they’re still testing positive. I am trying to do as little as humanly possible right now (posting this while propped up on the couch) in the hopes that I can keep things from progressing to pneumonia, as is a common outcome for me with any respiratory bug. It’s scary to feel this incapacitated. I am thankful, though, that my community here has rallied and made sure we have groceries and soup and even a new furnace filter (because of course ours crapped out in the middle of this).
Today is the first day of Spring Break for me, and I had hoped to be doing some sewing, and to have some knitting progress to share, but instead, I am trying to figure out the logistics of shifting my class online for the week after break (even if I’ve cleared the virus by then, I need to be VERY careful about not overexerting myself) and, in the worst-case, making my class “hand-off-able” (I really hope it doesn’t come to that, but if I end up in the hospital, someone other than me needs to have access to my course materials on Google Drive). I’m grateful that it’s Spring Break, because it means I’m not getting any further behind while I’m sick, or at least, no further behind than I already am (because I didn’t finish some of the work I needed to finish last week).
This really sucks, and it’s so hard for me to scroll through social media (one of the few activities I feel up to) and see people just blithely going about their day, or even traveling the world, completely maskless, as if the pandemic is a thing of the past. And I truly hope for their sake that they do not end up with COVID despite what I see as utter recklessness. It just makes me feel so frustrated that other people’s behavior made it so that all of the precautions we took weren’t enough. And I really, really hope I make it to the other side of this ok. That is not something I can take for granted. Probably no one should take it for granted, honestly. But I certainly can’t.
whit::knits 