I registered late for the A-to-Z blogging challenge this year, but I'm going to do it. In past years, I have done flash fiction inspired by readers' comments, and I'm happy to do that again, but this month the fiction will be peppered in amongst other random topics of my choosing. So suggest a story idea in a comment if you have one, otherwise I hope you will find my mental meanderings amusing!
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My niece (26) caught Covid a year ago and said it was like getting the flu, only lasted longer. Her husband never got it.
My mom (80 at the time) caught Covid and was asymptomatic the whole time. My dad never got it.
My husband caught Covid about three weeks ago (or that's when he tested positive) and I followed right along. But our Covids were different.
At first, he thought he had a chest cold. After a couple days, he said the constriction in his chest was worse than he usually got with bronchitis, so we went to get tested. He had it; I didn't. We isolated, and in a day or so, when my throat started feeling scratchy, I started sleeping in the living room. (It prevented the horrible waking-up stabby pain in the throat.) That was the worst for me: a few days of sore throat. For him, even now that it's over his chest is tighter when he breathes.
A week after his positive test, we tested again. This time we were both positive. I continued sleeping in the living room. Two days after we tested positive, we had to go to a hospital in Danang for a government health check in order to get new work visas. At the hospital they were testing for Covid before allowing anyone in. Brett was negative, but I was still positive. So he could go in and do his government health check, but I had to wait. They put me in a separate room, checked my vitals and asked a hundred questions, but when he was done, we went home.
Now that he was negative, we didn't want to keep passing it back and forth, so I bleached everything we both handle all the time: door handles, window latches, the refrigerator, the electric kettle, the remotes... I moved the antibacterial hand gel to the table between our chairs in the living room. We agreed to be more diligent about hand-washing, too. And no more hugs. No physical contact whatsoever.
A week after I tested positive, we hit the local clinic to test again. Early. Got there when they opened at 7:30. (Because remember, I still needed my government health check) God be praised, I was negative, so we hurried up the road to Danang in the hopes that they would accept this test result and not make me test again and wait. They accepted it and by 9:00 a.m. I was on my way through the battery of screenings mandated for the work visa. Whew!
Now that we're negative, we're determined to stay that way. Ever cautious, we are still staying home more than going out... because we may need to leave the country to activate the new visas. Maybe. We're waiting on the final word on that technicality.
Have you had Covid? How did it impact you? Is it still a part of your life?
O, that is indeed quite a hassle! As they say, no two Covid cases are similar. Coming to think of it, it's amazing and sometimes dreadful the way the virus is working on all of us.
ReplyDeleteMy wife, brother-in-law and father-in-law got it.
I haven't had any grave symptoms so far that has forced to get tested. But I am not willing to believe the virus hasn't got to me. It surely would have.
India, at least as of now, seems to have seen off Covid. There are fewer than 1,000 positive cases daily in the whole of this large country.
But there have been warnings that around July or August there could be a 4th wave here.
Keeping fingers crossed.
A2Z Challenge - Day 3 - Cats
Yeah, it seems hard not to get it when you live in a house with someone positive. I hope India's numbers stay down! I have a friend there whose holding off getting vaccinated until a particular vaccine comes out. She's staying isolated with her family until then.
DeleteGlad to hear you're on the other side of it. I've been hearing awful stories of Long Covid. I'm still masking even though mask mandates are over. I'm triple vaxxed and planning on getting the fourth shot now that I'm eligible. I really, really don't want to catch this thing.
ReplyDeleteOddly, now that we've had it, we're even more diligent about masking in public (well, I've always been pretty anal about that) and washing hands when we come home from some other place.
DeleteMy wife got it but we don't know where. We assume that I brought it home from work but I never had symptoms and never tested positive so we really have no idea how it came in the house. She mainly had throat issues for awhile and that was about it.
ReplyDeletePretty sure Brett brought the plague to us. He's much more social than I am, and tested positive first. It seemed that we each got symptoms as we usually do with a cold, only much worse: my colds are usually throat and sinus based, his are more like bronchitis.
DeleteI drank it to death.
ReplyDelete