It was finally our turn

For the past couple of years we've been able to say No when asked about COVID: no personal infections, no contact with anyone who has tested positive for COVID. There was always several degrees of separation between us and people we sort of knew who did get sick: you know, friends of friends of friends, people we used to see occasionally but haven't moved in the same circles with in years. That changed this week. 

Am I allowed to complain that it's been remarkably anti-climactic? Nine days ago we went to a small, belated birthday party at a cousin's summer cottage. There were only 9 people there, the S.O. and myself included. As of today, so far as I know, SARS-COV-2 has zapped maybe six of us, five for sure. Every person there has taken COVID seriously: vaccinations, boosters, masking, avoiding large public gatherings, the usual life in the plague years behavior. The virus slithered into our small circle anyway. The S.O.'s cousin messaged him Tuesday to say that four of the people at the cottage had positive rapid test results. The S.O. told me that he'd felt all day like he was coming down with a head cold so he dug out the box of rapid tests a generous government sent us several months ago. His test result? Positive. So I swabbed my nostrils, too. Good news, at least that day, for me: Negative.  

The S.O. turned into a snot mass production facility -- he went through an amazing amount of Kleenex in one evening -- and called his PCP at the V.A. clinic Wednesday morning. She emailed a prescription for Paxlovid to the closest pharmacy; I picked it up Wednesday afternoon. He took the first set of pills and, maybe it was a placebo effect, but snot production slowed rather quickly. He's basically back to normal now -- or as normal as he ever gets. I felt fine but kept testing, kept coming up negative. Then we ran out of rapid tests. 

Naturally, that's when I got sick. Felt fine most of the day then got hit in late afternoon with a massive wave of fatigue coupled with a vaguely feverish feeling and a whole lot of body aches. Crawled upstairs, napped, stumbled downstairs, checked my temperature (101), and mumbled a lot about bad timing: getting sick on a Friday afternoon is not ideal, especially when we'd used all the rapid test kits in the house. I decided that, well, I'll suck it up and if I'm sicker in the morning we'll drag my aching body to urgent care. I must not have been taking it all too seriously because I didn't bother telling the S.O. to call an ambulance if he noticed me turning blue in my sleep.

Except in the morning I wasn't sicker. Felt a little stuffed up and a little more tired than usual, but no fever, no aching. And that was it. It's like I just experienced the world's shortest case of the flu. Okay, I know there's no way to know if it was/is actually COVID (I am not curious enough to do the 45 mile drive to Walgreen to pick up test kits). If it was, the brevity of the feeling like shit must be a good sign the vaccinations worked. If it wasn't, maybe it was a new personal record in getting over a summer cold.

I am vaguely disappointed things didn't turn more dramatic, although I'm not sure why. The appropriate feeling should be relief. Life is strange.