Carter came home from school on Tuesday sniffling and sneezy. He had mentioned that morning that his throat felt a little funny, but in an allergy-ridden household, throat stuff is par for the course in the morning when the post-nasal drip is clearing out. While I was hoping it was just an allergy thing, once he came home it became clear pretty quickly that it was more than that. Cue Jacob's anxiety and a whole slew of internet searches and calls I didn't want to have to do.
I first called the pediatrician, who told me their next testing appointment wasn't until Thursday morning. Previously we could get right in, but apparently not now! I didn't make that appointment right away because I figured I'd look for other testing options. But Walgreens and CVS were booked, and kids can't go to the county's testing sites. So it was back to the pediatrician as a backup. I tried looking into urgent care, but I couldn't seem to get any sort of confirmation on how much that would cost us. Urgent cares can be notoriously expensive despite insurance, so I didn't want to get stuck with a $100+ bill for something we could get for free or a small copay a day or so later. I had to go out that night anyway, so I stopped at both Walgreens and CVS to see if they had any over-the-counter home tests. They were both out and didn't give me a lot of hope that other locations would have them, but Walgreens did tell me their shipment was coming in at 10am the next day so I should call then and see. Good enough, I guess.
By that point I was so frustrated that my kid was sick and would definitely miss two days of school regardless of symptoms simply because we couldn't get a test. And sure, it was feasible for us to manage those two days off, and yes, if we really needed to, we could suck it up and go to urgent care. But what about people who can't take time off work that easily (or work from home) or can't afford a risky urgent care bill? How can they be expected to do the right thing when it makes life impossibly complicated? If you want people to conform in order to minimize spread, it needs to be easy. And right now this is NOT easy. I coincidentally read an article my friend posted about how home tests are readily available in Europe and how it makes no sense that it's not the norm here--in fact, it should have been a long time ago prior to vaccines becoming available. I really miss the state testing site at the community college, where you could usually get an appointment within a day and get your results reliably within a day or two after. It still wasn't perfect, but this is just annoying in comparison--endless internet searches, calling around, waiting. At least that was a one-shot deal.
On Wednesday morning I did a bit more digging on the urgent care thing, with no luck. Ironically, my boss had to get her son tested that day when he was sent home with cold symptoms, and she ended up waiting at least two hours at an urgent care (after already trying one with a three-hour wait). So that didn't seem like a great option either. I did end up calling Walgreens around 10:30 and ran over to quickly pick up a rapid test. I brought it back home and read through the directions. It seemed simple enough. But as I was trying to swab Carter, he sneezed directly in my face. I had my mask on, but my eyes took the brunt of it. So, I knew that if he was positive, I was definitely going to be as well! That 10 minute wait was almost as bad as a pregnancy test! I nervously eyed it up, but did my best to wait patiently. Fortunately, it looked like a very clear negative. Whew.
I will say that later when I looked at it to throw it out, I noticed that there was a faint pink line right up near the edge of the strip, but not where the positive pink line should have been. That made me nervous that it was a defective test, but upon further investigation (I Googled it, which led to an Amazon product question that referenced the company FAQs) a pink line near that part of the strip (or apparently even a perpendicular line?) is still a negative. Weird, but glad it wasn't just me! Even still, we kept his appointment for Thursday just to be safe--after the swabbing causing him to sneeze I wasn't confident in my quality control! It turned out he was still pretty sniffly and sneezy Thursday morning, so I wouldn't have wanted to send him to school like that regardless of his testing status.
I was grateful that the rapid test gave us peace of mind during our wait, and that it was a long weekend for the kids anyway, so he was just missing two days instead of three or more. But it still stinks that every little cold now sends us into a tizzy and necessitates at least a day or two out of school (which probably always should have been the case, but let's face it--it hasn't been and it's hard to adjust) just because we don't want anyone else to have to deal with this same craziness. I guess my mom's edict of, "Unless you're throwing up or have a fever, you're going to school," is no longer valid in the COVID era.
While all of this was going on, I was grappling with the news that a distant-ish cousin of mine (second cousin, once removed, if I calculated it right) was dying of COVID. While he was technically a cousin, for most of my life I just knew the family as close friends of the family through church. They always sat one section over from us, and his dad was the guy that passed candy to kids from his suit pocket. There were a bunch of siblings, but when I was young only one had kids my age. We went to school together, and I suppose I was only vaguely aware of their uncles. They sang in choir with my dad, and eventually each got married and had kids of their own, who were quite a bit younger than me. I suppose it should have been a hint that we were related when they were at our reunion at the beach each year, but it wasn't until I was a bit older that someone explained the relation to me. If I recall correctly, the matriarch of that family was first cousins with my grandma--and someday when I take over the family tree database I can confirm. Anyway, it's a truly wonderful family with deep ties in our church, and while the family relation was cool, the church relationship was more prominent. Last week this particular cousin's sister-in-law (ironically the loudest anti-vax voice in my Facebook feed) posted a GoFundMe for him and his family, as he, his wife, their daughter and her husband were all diagnosed, with he and his wife getting the worst of it. Apparently he didn't have insurance, so the hospital bills would be expensive. It was clearly not a good situation then, and only went downhill from there. I don't know if he was vaccinated, although based on how both he and his wife fared, I am assuming they weren't. Around the time I was searching for Carter's testing on Tuesday night, I had gotten word that his kidneys were failing and it was likely just a matter of time. His wife was also on the verge of intubation.
He died Wednesday morning. My heart is absolutely broken over it all. He was the biggest teddy bear of a man, the strawberry blondish one among a sea of dark-haired brothers, jovial but soft-spoken in contrast to his broad-chested build. He had a daughter who had two kids, who have now lost their grandfather and are facing either the loss or long recovery of their grandmother, who is obviously heartbroken amidst her own fight. Because his daughter was diagnosed as well, I'm assuming she never got to say a proper goodbye. And his own mother, the sweetest woman you've ever met, will now need to deal with his loss in her advanced age. I just can't believe I won't see his smiling face at reunions. He was probably only in his early 60s and it seemed like nothing could take him down...but COVID did. And again, that's what makes this virus such a jerk. For all the people that thought they'd get through fine, there are so many that just didn't, for no apparent reason. We know the flu can do the same thing, but this just seems even more arbitrary and it's a stark reminder why I'm not willing to gamble with my family. He will be so missed by so many people and I just don't know how to process this terrible loss.
Then Thursday morning I got in a text exchange with a good friend of ours--a fellow lax parent, church friend, and one-time cafeteria lady for both kids. She's a spitfire, for sure, but it's been a hard couple years for her with challenging MS flares, complications from her medications, and now COVID threatening her already immune-comprised health. She recently found out her medicine has rendered her COVID vaccine useless, so that's been really hard on her with having to continue to take major precautions in all areas of life, particularly with a husband and two kids who are living their lives outside the house. She already had to give up her job in the schools (Carter's last school, specifically) because of this, and now it's just getting harder to stay safe. We're both quite discouraged by our church situation, and even by Christianity in general right now. Our church was so good for so long when the pandemic began, always erring on the side of caution. But at some point in the spring when things eased up, they opted to remove their masking and distancing rules. They did maintain the gym as a masked and distanced area, but it is unnerving that down the hall is a room full of people taking zero precautions. We've been sitting in the gym ever since. Jacob doesn't want to go to the youth gathering because they don't have masking, but we've let Carter go to Sunday School despite a similar situation just because we know he'll get more out of it there. But our friend is really struggling because she feels unsafe there, and her kids can't really participate fully either--despite being vaccinated--because the youth gatherings don't take enough precautions. Her daughter is up for confirmation now, and she's scared to go for fear she'll bring something back to her mom. It's just so sad that a safe place like church has to feel uncomfortable because people think their freedom in Christ means that the government can't control them, but in reality we should all be doing what we can to help others like Jesus commanded us. It's such a weird thing in my mind. I understand masking makes some people uncomfortable, but it won't kill them--but it could kill our friend to go to church. I just feel like the burden on immune-compromised people is so unfair and isolating, and it's such a small thing to properly mask and take precautions to allow everyone to participate in society. I feel the threat as the parent of an unvaccinated kid, but even that pales in comparison because Carter would likely come out okay, but it's such a real threat to her life. It's so discouraging, and there's really no end in sight when people don't want to take precautions, when tests aren't available, and when variants keep complicating things further.
Carter's results took a full 52 hours to come back, which meant we had to switch his therapy appointment to Zoom at the last minute and miss his soccer game. Luckily, it was negative as expected. But as things tend to go around here, yesterday Jacob was complaining he'd had a dry mouth and throat for the past couple days, and by last night he started sniffling and sneezing. Within a couple hours he was a mess, much like Carter was Tuesday night. Knowing he had a basketball tournament today, I gave him some zinc, but clearly it wasn't quite enough. Miraculously, Craig managed to find a drive-up rapid test for him this afternoon at a pharmacy. We know that more than likely it will be negative, but it'll be important to have for Tuesday when he goes back to school, if he has any lingering symptoms and they want to try to send him home. We didn't want to risk waiting to see if he was better by then, because then he likely would have been on the same track as Carter with having to miss days waiting for a test and results. So now we wait again, hopefully much shorter this time. We were all supposed to go to a family party tomorrow, but now it looks like it'll just be Carter and me--but we'll make the best of it and maybe find a new playground along the way. It's too bad Jacob had to miss his tournament today, since it sounded like there was going to be much more balanced playing time (guess some parents had given the coach an earful), but I don't think Jacob was too upset. He's really ready for high school season and wants this one to be done ASAP.
So, this weekend has turned out quite a bit differently than we expected, but what else is new in the age of COVID? Oh, and did I mention that I found out Thursday that my work schedule is now going to be two days remote one week and three the next due to some capacity issues? So things continue to change and evolve and I have no idea how all of this is going to go...but we're about to find out.
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