These coronavirus variants seem perfectly timed to keep me from visiting my family in the Pacific Northwest. This summer we had to scuttle a trip because I actually contracted the disease (almost certainly the Delta variant), and now Omicron has emerged at the exact right-wrong moment, when we are scheduled to fly out on Monday. Dealing with holiday airport crowds, and then being in an enclosed tube with a bunch of strangers for five hours, is awful in normal times. I didn't think it could get much worse, but here we are.
To make things even more unsettling, we had a few close contact situations this week. Lil' S1 had to stay home from school yesterday because a kid in his class tested positive. It was kinda ridiculous, however, because the kid was last in school Friday last week. So it was a full seven days after contact. At that point, why even bother? The damage is already done, if there is any. But there almost certainly wasn't because Lil' S1 wasn't sick (a week later) and should have been able to go to school. Whatever. It wasn't a big deal for us to have him home with us. We're fortunate that way.
Also, earlier in the week, I got an email from a friend I played pub trivia with on Sunday saying he tested positive for Covid. I debated on whether or not I should get tested, but ultimately decided against it. It was already three days after contact, and I'm booster-vaxxed, and I already got Covid, which means I'm probably (not definitely) pretty well inoculated, even against Omicron. Plus, mostly importantly, I wasn't sick. So, I figured I could just stay out of public, and wait it out, which is basically the same thing I would do even if I had it. (Also, for what it's worth, five other people on my team did get tested and all were negative.)
I will admit, however, that part of me didn't want to get tested because I was scared it would come back positive and ruin our trip. Then I felt guilty about this, so I confessed it to S, and she told me I should at least tell my family about it, so I sent everybody a text explaining everything, and everybody was cool about it. They get it. There's no way to be totally safe. Of course, I don't want to be reckless, but by the time we fly out on Monday it will be eight days after my close contact, and we've made it a point to not be around anybody outside the family since then (except the kids at school). If I, nor anybody else in the family, is sick on Monday (so far so good), then I think we've done pretty much all we can. You can't practically get much safer than that. If early indications concerning Omicron bear out, we might have to adopt a new new normal in which symptoms guide us more so than test results.
Although that can be tricky for people like me because I can manifest symptoms in my head just by thinking about them. I'm not a hypchondriac, but I do have an obsessive side to me, so I can fixate on the smallest twinge or pang and scare myself into thinking it's a sign of Covid. This is especially annoying for me because I kinda live my life with low-grade Covid symptoms. I always have a little bit of a runny nose (especially in the winter); I frequently wake up with a dry throat (presumably because of how I breath in my sleep); I lift weights regularly, so my muscles are often sore; and I'm always tired because I go to bed too late.
You know how you can say a word over and over until it doesn't make any sense? Ant, ant, ant, ant, ant, ant, ant... I can do that with Covid symptoms. I can dwell on them in my own head, until I can't tell if I actually feel them or not. Thankfully, at some point, life will snap me out of this -- I'll have to take a call or rake the leaves or cook dinner or something -- and then I'll forget about it, and then I'll remember again later, but this time I'll realize that I'm definitely not actually sick, because if I was, I would have noticed it while I was doing whatever it is I was doing earlier. And then I'll feel a little ache in my thigh and the entire sequence will repeat itself. It's a fun a little cycle.
And speaking of things not making sense, lest we get there with this post, I'm going to wrap it up now.
Until next time...
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