So...it's been a weird few days. After Jacob's fever on Thursday night, we managed to schedule a test for him through the pediatrician on Friday. By then he was already feeling much better. His 99.8 fever dropped to 99.1 before disappearing completely, and his congestion was significantly better. We did the test anyway, and Craig decided to keep his appointment for Monday for the free state testing that we set up initially, before realizing we could do it through the doctor. Craig was feeling a little funky on Friday, just a little tired with a headache and some minor GI symptoms, so we thought it was wise to check him out, too. Since Jacob was feeling much better by later Friday, we felt a little less worried that it could be COVID, but as I finished up my Christmas shopping and did a grocery run I was a bit more mindful that our plans may still be changing. I did a bunch of random running around, trying to wrap up as much as I could, particularly Sunday in a bit of a panic when some of the last things I needed weren't in stock at the closest locations. I came home and did some calling around, managed to put one thing on hold across the county at a store really close to another store that had other things I needed, with the plan to go the following night after work. Well...no sooner did I hang up the phone with the store than I brought up my email and saw Jacob's results were in. I can't even describe the feeling when I saw the "POS". Jacob was positive for COVID. Less than a week before Christmas. In complete disbelief and quiet panic, I showed Craig and then broke the news to Jacob, who immediately went into complete denial. I spent a solid hour on hold waiting to schedule tests for Carter and me, which ended up being on Tuesday. Reality quickly set in that our Christmas would be spent completely at home. First we lost extended family celebrations, then in-person church, then our immediate family celebrations. I also panicked a little because I didn't have anything for a proper Christmas dinner, and now we'd be stuck at home for a while. No time like the present to figure out curbside pickup, I guess.
When I Facetimed my parents to share the news and change in plans, it turned out my mom wasn't feeling so hot either, though she had a negative rapid test that same day. I encouraged her to go get a real one a couple days later, just because I've heard mixed results on the rapid tests and considering she turned 70 on Monday, there was no time for messing around. Luckily she got one through her doctor and we found out this morning her result was negative. Whew.
On the bright side, Jacob's last day of school was Friday (which he missed--thank goodness), but that meant he wasn't missing anything this week. Carter had to miss his last in-person day, which was a bummer since they did a lot of fun stuff, but his teacher did drop off a nice little bag of treats and activities, plus something he could give us. Craig and I are both working remotely anyway, so aside from the change in Christmas plans, there was minimal other interruption to life. In that way I definitely felt lucky. Also, the fact that Jacob's symptoms only lasted for a day seemed pretty fortunate. He did mention after the fact that he felt a little extra tired on Wednesday night at basketball training, which probably makes a lot of sense now. I'm thankful he was masked there. It was also good he showed symptoms when he did and that we caught the fever so we knew to get him tested. It could have been disastrous if we chalked it up to a cold and took a mostly asymptomatic kid to Christmas with four aging grandparents, his aunt, uncle, and four cousins. It could have been so much worse, so I'm thankful it worked out like it did.
We got the call from the county on Monday. Of course they recommended isolating Jacob in his room, and being masked in the house. While I understand the recommendations, I was struggling a bit with them. For one, we'd all been exposed to Jacob for days. Craig had driven him to school and back and forth for basketball on Wednesday, and I drove him to school on Thursday. We'd all been around him all week and weekend. Despite our protestations, the boys were playing tackle football in Jacob's room. How could we not all be exposed?
As a side note, if there's ever a worse pandemic, our boys will take us all out. No matter what we said or did, Jacob would not keep distance from anyone, but most of all his brother. Even if we didn't know for sure, even if he didn't feel sick, we repeatedly asked him to stay away...to no avail. Ugh. It continued even after the diagnosis, but by then Carter was insisting on wearing a mask in the house.
In addition to having had so much exposure to Jacob pre-diagnosis, isolating him was complicated by Christmas week. Sure, we could leave him in his room all week, but we'd have to let him out by Friday for Christmas. I'm not going to isolate my poor kid in his room for Christmas. That's just cruel. Maybe if we had major complicating factors we'd have to, but our risk is probably relatively low (Craig's history of asthma aside--though I've heard that's not a major factor), so given the prior exposure and inevitable release, we weren't being too crazy with it.
I think the craziest part of this was that I began to think, "Well, if we've all been exposed, assuming we remain symptom-free, maybe it would be good if we all tested positive so we could just isolate and get through it together at once, then have a little less fear about going out and doing things in the future, at least until we're able to get our vaccine." I could see us going out to dinner, and Craig was fantasizing about going back to the gym. It just seemed like it might be nice to take that little extra edge of fear off if we all had antibodies as a backup. We'd still mask and do what we could, but it would make us a little less nervous about those judgment calls. Heck, I'm supposed to be going to Binghamton in a couple weeks for my future godson's baptism, and it would have been a little less of a worry to travel and stay in a hotel if all of this was behind us.
We eagerly waited for results for a couple days, constantly reminding Jacob we didn't know anything so he should still be careful. In the meantime, we finished up work and school (well, sort of--Carter took it easy yesterday so he has a few things to finish up over break), I blew through a little more wrapping, figured out my first curbside grocery order (which gave us what we needed for a decent Christmas dinner), and basically got ready for this alternative version of Christmas. I did sneak out on Monday night ONLY because I knew that I could get the last gifts we needed with minimal exposure. One was a five minute store visit to get the item on hold, one was contactless curbside pickup, and then I made a last minute decision to take another five minute, minimal contact stop to a store across the parking lot that I knew could have one last gift I hadn't been able to find on Sunday. With me masked and everyone else masked, showing no symptoms and properly hand-sanitized, with less than five minutes of socially distanced contact (when 15 minutes with no mask is the standard), the odds of transmitting anything seemed really slim. And it seemed worth it to finish off our shopping (given all the unknowns) and get the last thing we needed to make our homebound Christmas complete. So, once that was done, I was done.
Of course, it turned out all of that concern was probably for naught. Shockingly, when I checked my e-mail one last time last night as Craig was falling asleep next to me, my test result was in! I couldn't believe mine had beaten his since he was a full day prior to me, but all I could figure was that there was less admin stuff to do with mine since I was already in the system. Shockingly, mine was negative. We were very surprised and even more curious about Craig's results. That sent us into a whole new set of scenarios and questions about what to do with Jacob, how to handle retesting, what that might mean for the baptism if my symptoms or positive test come later, and whether we should be rethinking how we're handling all of this. I never expected to be disappointed by a negative result, that's for sure! And I knew it would aggravate Jacob as well since he was already insisting his test was wrong. Then this morning, Craig checked his phone first thing and his result was in...and we were even more surprised to find that his was negative, as well! Carter's results will likely take an extra day or two since we can't access the portal for him and need to wait for the state to get them and send them out, but I anticipate his will also be negative. But at this point, who really knows?!
As of now, the plan is to schedule tests for a few days after Christmas for all of us. If Jacob's is negative, we'll assume he's in the clear. If it's not, we'll at least know his wasn't a fluke and we can isolate longer. If we come back positive, we'll know we tested too early. If not, then hopefully we'll be in the clear. I figure that even if it does come back positive, it should give me enough isolation time to still make the baptism, though obviously I'll have to consider if it's truly safe to cut it that close. Either way, I'd likely take a rapid test before leaving just to be completely safe.
It all does beg the question of what's actually happening. The odds of Jacob's test being wrong are probably slim. Did we test too early? Is he just not a super spreader? Since his symptoms were minimal, it's possible his viral load was low and therefore made it harder to transmit significant amounts to us. I have no idea if it's possible, but I wonder if we got it in such small doses that our bodies were able to fight it off and it wasn't detectable in our systems. I have no idea if you can build real immunity that way, but wouldn't it be fascinating if my next blood donation came back with antibodies? Doubtful, but at this point I'm not sure anything would surprise me.
So, despite having a few answers as we work our way through a completely unusual Christmas Eve, we're still caught in this weird waiting game. Assuming symptoms stay away, I think we can still have a fun and very respectable Christmas, even if it will be a far cry from the family-filled two days we usually have. But there are a lot of unknowns for the days ahead, even if we don't need to go anywhere or do anything. I am definitely relieved to be done with work for an extra long weekend, then only have one more day before another extra long weekend. One work day in 11 is pretty great, and much needed right now. Not to mention the kids' break is actually a break for us, too, for a change. No early mornings and no homeschooling might actually outweigh the chaos of having them home together at this point.
But as I said on Facebook, nothing really says "2020" quite like a quarantine Christmas. We always sort of wondered what it might be like to spend Christmas at home, and I guess we're about to find out.
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