COVID Strikes!

After managing to remain COVID-free for the duration of the pandemic, A and I both got COVID last week. Other than the one weekend outing to the state parks, we’ve basically been sick on and off for the entire month of February.

The first week, A brought home a nice upper respiratory tract infection, which he gave to me about two days later. This is actually unusual, as most of the times he brings little colds home, I don’t actually get them…or if I do, it’s not for another week. So these things have been wicked contagious.

The cough from the original cold lasted for a solid three weeks and seemed to be minimally improving, until one day A’s cough started getting worse and changed to something dry and raspy. He got a headache, which isn’t unusual as he’s been getting migraines since he was little. He went to bed at 7pm, and around 5am woke up with a low-grade fever and general malaise.

I took him to the doctor. She said it appeared to be another cold but was going to test him for strep, as both it and COVID were going around. And she suggested we do a rapid COVID test when we got home since theirs were slower. Imagine my surprise when we did the home test and that red COVID line flared up within a matter of minutes.

We’re both fully vaccinated and boostered and hadn’t shown a hint of COVID in the last four years. But both of our immune systems were already compromised from the earlier chest cold. And a bit of Googling suggested that a new variant called COVID-23 was making the rounds.

I started showing the same symptoms a few days later…rasping cough, low-grade fever, chills, muscle aches, fatigue. One night I coughed so hard that I threw up. Luckily I was in the shower, so it made for easy cleanup. I did a COVID test…and it came up negative, which made no sense. I clearly had the same thing my son did.

A little more research into COVID-23 noted that initial tests often came up with a false negative. So I waited a couple of days and took another. And my bright red COVID line showed up as quickly as my son’s had.

Happily I was already teleworking while A quarantined, and the worst does seem to be over. I guess one perk of being vaccinated is that if you do get sick, it’s supposed to be a milder case. So with a few more days of quarantine ahead, we should both be right as rain.

[Note: the worst wasn’t over. The wheezing and sleeplessness kicked in a few days later.]