We’re not yet sure how it happened. We were masking indoors, avoiding indoor dining and crowded areas, and not traveling. Still, on a Saturday evening a few weeks ago our au pair started feeling sick and took a COVID test. It was positive. MJ and I immediately ones of our own, his was positive, mine was negative. As we sat with this knowledge, it weighed heavy. We spent over two years exercising caution, and just two weeks after getting the boys their first vaccine dose, we got infected.
As it turned out, our infections appear to have been relatively mild and swept through quickly, with only some lingering fatigue. Our au pair was probably the sickest with traditional COVID symptoms. MJ had his fatigue and headache symptoms the longest. I got away with just five days of headache, fatigue, and sore neck, but it was enough to knock me out of all but a couple hours of work per day that week. Adam and Aaron didn’t seem to get sick at all, in spite of us all being in the house together sharing germs. It’s unclear if they were just asymptomatic, or if their single dose of vaccine two weeks prior protected them from infection entirely. In the end, it probably doesn’t matter. With negative COVID tests from adults, when the time came to clear Adam to go back to preschool we finally tested them and they were negative.
I’m grateful the boys didn’t end up sick, but that fortune also meant we had a one year old and a three year old bouncing off the walls while their trio of caretakers were sick, and we couldn’t go to parks or playgrounds to burn off energy. They watched more TV than normal when we were the most sick, and I rallied my energy to bring them out to the backyard to play a couple times. But we also couldn’t do our typical weekend outings for two weeks in a row, which I know was incredibly disappointing to them.
As for the adults, I think to some extent we’ve grown accustomed to hermit life. We still go out to pick up food and get groceries, but the added level of stay-at-home that full quarantine required was not a real hardship. The most difficult part was figuring out what services to use for grocery and take-out deliveries, and coordinating with restaurants we’re friendly with to let us pay with a credit card over the phone and pop it in the trunk of the car. As far as difficulty level goes, even while navigating a headache the process of selecting groceries while resting on the couch barely ranks.
Our eating habits did change some. We made a big dent in the food that had been collecting in our freezer by having a half dozen meals cooked at home, which is unusual for us. We prepared tacos, sausages, ravioli, and bao buns, and finally finished the brisket and turkey leftovers we had in the freezer. It was nice to know that we can get away with eating at home if the need arises, and to not have to go out and pick up food all the time. I didn’t enjoy the additional dirty dishes load though, especially with the level of fatigue I was experiencing. The kitchen sink was getting pretty basic triage for several days while the pots and pans piled up.
Taco night!
Why yes, that is leftover turkey from Thanksgiving
We had to delay the second vaccine for the boys by a few weeks so they’re well outside the infection zone, but still landing within the guidelines for vaccine spacing. Thankfully we were cleared quickly enough so that an outpatient procedure I’m having done this week won’t need to be rescheduled. And if there is any long-term impact of this infection on any of us, we don’t know about it yet, and we’re all doing much better now. I’ve been back at work for a full week, and the house is even recovering from the chaotic mess it had descended into.
It still feels a little disappointing to have dodged it for so long, and finally succumb. But with restrictions falling by the wayside, it was probably only a matter of time. We caught it during a major wave here in the bay area, so our basic precautions simply weren’t enough and we got unlucky. Thankfully, the hospitals we sufficiently staffed and available, there are many treatments out there now, and the vaccines that we all got probably prevented us from getting sicker.
Perhaps most importantly, our diligence in not becoming infection vectors ourselves protected everyone around us, and likely saved lives by helping control the spread. With that in mind, I’m still wearing my N95 mask in grocery stores until it seems safe to do otherwise. It’s not much of an inconvenience, and it’s still not worth taking the risk.