A most unwelcome guest: Covid-19 visited my home

Well, it happened. I guess it was a matter of time.

Lest you get too worried, I want to say right now that we are all ok so far, thank God/Heavens/Fate/(insert your favorite cause here).

Here’s the story.

On Saturday December 5th 2020, my 22 year old son, Reynaldo, began to experience high fever and general malaise. We contacted his doctor and she arranged for a Covid-19 test ASAP.

A couple of days later the test came back positive. If you are a parent, you know exactly how we felt (please know that I am not minimizing the experiences of non-parents who tale carenof sick loved ones, but I can only talk about my own experience. I don’t wanna be exposed to “TwitterRage” 🙄), and I deleted my Facebook some time ago and I have absolutely zero regrets, but as I usually do, I digress.

Anyway, we immediately “sprung to action”. Got an oxygen meter, checked our fever-reducing medication stock, etc., and well, we waited… Kind of.

Lisa (my way better and waaaaaay prettier half) and I began having “the sniffles” and annoying headaches (is there any other kind?). Our youngest son, Andy, is a bull. Viruses take a look at him and they say “thanks, but no thanks”. Joke aside, he was and still is symptom free. However, since Lisa and I showed cold-related symptoms we got tested as well. Vanessa, our daughter, also got tested too since even though she did not have any symptoms or live with us anymore, she works at a school. They wouldn’t test Andy because he had no symptoms (I know, it doesn’t make sense to me either).

As you may imagine, the last 10 days or so were… intense. Our routine included frequent temperature and blood oxygen level, frequent check ups in the middle of the night (ok, that was me), as well as frequent sanitization of pretty much everything. We did not hug each other (we like doing that a lot) and tried to be as physically distant as possible, which was challenging, because we don’t have a big house.

Please let me remind you that Reynaldo is autistic and has other related conditions. For example, he is very prone to anxiety (chip of the old block… sigh). We chose not to tell him of his test results so his anxiety wouldn’t blow out; his psychiatrist told us that we probable made the right choice. Our son is very much aware of the epidemic and actually, when his symptoms began he directly told us that he “Hoped it was not Covid”.

Lisa, Vanessa, and I tested negative thank heavens 😃, and as I told you at the beginning of this post all is well with everyone. As I write this words waiting for a snowstorm on December 16, Reynaldo has been fever-free for three days and in much better spirits. He is already his usual chatty and delightful self. We are not, of course, letting our guard down.

One thing that I did to blow off steam while we waited was to tweet. I posted a few tweets with… bad words. Nothing like I have seen on Twitter, but I do not like swearing, in English or Spanish, while speaking, or while writing. So I deleted those tweets, promising that I would organize my thoughts.

Well, here I go.

If you think that what I am about to say is political, please know that it is not, and if you decide not to be friends with me anymore, no hard feelings. Anyway, at this point, you should have a very good idea of where I stand on these matters.

Well, here I go ( this time for reals).

As parents, Lisa and I were in agony waiting for his test results, and once we got his positive result, we were through the agony of watching him, fearing that his symptoms would worsen. Pardon my “selfishness”, but I am (and so is Lisa) *very* happy that his symptoms seem to have gone away. I cannot even begin to imagine the hell on earth that parents who were not as fortunate as us have gone through, especially those who lost their precious child, regardless of whether said child was 1, 22, or 56. And as I said, let’s not even talk about those who lost parents, siblings, significant others, friends. My heart goes to all them; in fact, it’s been going to them for a while.

Coming back to our personal experience, and since I promised that I would not use bad words, I will tell you that I am livid. I am livid for what we went through because we are very *careful*, with everything that it entails, and we never fail to wear masks.

I will never forget or forgive those who allowed this to happen or those who enabled the people who allowed this to happen (it is not hard to figure out the political/economic/religious groups that enabled this). And again, I will not forget, I will not forgive.**

Never. Ever.

None of this suffering needed to happen. From those in power who minimized and even denied how dangerous the situation was while fully knowing what was coming, to the foolish people (I promised I wound not use bad words) that blindly followed those lethal policies.

Moreover, it is immoral (I wish there was a stronger word for this, bad word or otherwise) that many of the aforementioned people in power, whose actions caused the preventable death of thousands (and counting), are the same who are first in line to get the vaccine that was produced by the same science they relentlessly dismissed and mocked.

As far as the “followers” go, I could go into the sociology of how people have forgotten how much worse infectious disease used to be and how vaccines and public health common sense helped, or into the sociology of cults, but I am not going to.

Because I am livid.

I am livid that there is still people who stupidly (stupid is not a bad word) still refuse to to wear a mask or take even the barest, minimal precautionary measures to prevent contagion and spreading.

I am livid because we got lucky/fortunate/blessed (insert your favorite reason here) this time. There are no guarantees that this unwelcomed visitor will not get into our home again, and maybe next time we will live through a different outcome.

I am livid because of all of those not as fortunate as us.

I could go on, but I can’t.

Because I am livid, and I don’t trust myself to keep my promise to you. I ran out of “good words” to write.

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**One of my superpowers is to hold the strongest grudges. Not proud of it, but facts are facts.

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Image credit: FDA.