Remember when having a cough was something that just happened randomly from the months of October to April? Your friends might bring you soup if you were really laid up.
Now we're in this weird place where every sniffle is an alarm bell that we might be ground zero for a super spread. My husband developed a cough on Thanksgiving weekend; we had felt safe visiting with our relatives that we had included in our bubble throughout the pandemic because we generally have been maintaining a pretty consistent bubble, social distancing, and masking. Nonetheless, my husband started with this croak-y cough on Saturday evening. I was mortified. If I think about the real, non-COVID world, this seems like a really trivial thing to be mortified about. How many times had I gotten the flu over the Christmas holidays when I was a university student? But now, it's not. It could be life and death. Luckily, my husband was able to get a same-day COVID test as soon as we got back and the next-day results were negative We had only passed on a minor virus to my mother and her husband to battle in the following week.
This week, it was my turn. I started Monday with a sore throat. It was my only symptom, one which is a classic sign of a week-long sinus infection for me, and the pre-screen for work told me I should still attend, although I did get a call from infection control on the way to tell me I had to get a COVID test ASAP. I already had one pre-booked for another job. It took longer for my result to come back. It was negative, as I suspected it would be.
But the wait period in-between onset of symptoms and when I finally got my test results back was odd. Messaging people with whom I had pre-planned meetings and appointments to discuss my symptoms and the likelihood I would have my test results back by meeting time seemed like the right thing to do, but also seemed like a strange conversation to have in the context of a non-COVID world. I wonder if it's something we'll continue to do when this whole weird world eventually resolves.
What I have learned: wearing a mask with a head cold is harder than wearing a mask without a head cold, sneezes have smells and they're not great, and most people are appreciative of a pre-meeting symptom discussion.
