Positive. After the panic stopped, I remembered to breathe, albeit with a mask on and away from anyone else. With that one word, you start to question your ability to judge your own body’s health. Welcome to the world of being asymptomatic positive with COVID-19. Upon further reflection, I probably have some very mild symptoms – or that could just be the paranoid anxiety talking.
But what really settles in is fear. Did I unknowingly give this to someone and where the hell did I get it from? The latter doesn’t really matter anymore. I breathe, therefore I am at risk of catching it. Since I wouldn’t have guessed my positive status, whoever came in contact with me probably didn’t either. The former keeps me up at night and, well, honestly it brings me tears. We have two kids. And I am grateful we chose science and had both our kids fully vaccinated as they are holding at negative for COVID-19. I think we’d test them hourly if we could.
Everyone else we’ve come in contact with has been vaccinated and boosted, so we remain hopeful that science prevails and they remain negative. But I am figuratively holding my breath until they get a negative test result on the fifth day since their last exposure. That’s assuming they can schedule a PCR test. Yup, that’s my dig at the need for more testing. It’s time to ramp back up to 2020 levels. Testing helps at an individual piece-of-mind level, especially if there are positive cases in a household or your pod. Although it might also be time to acknowledge it’s no longer an “if” but a “when” for testing positive. These are the things you ponder while sitting in asymptomatic positive quarantine, fearing you will infect the rest of your family.
The fear would be unimaginable right now if we had chosen to not vaccinate our kids. We’ve tried to be careful and mitigate risk, but we can’t live in a bubble forever. The kids go to school and do activities, and we leave the house.
We started to think about what we’d do if the kids became positive, especially after having been contact-traced because of in-school positive COVID-19 contacts. Never thought it would be us telling our kids we’re positive and that we have to wear masks at home. I’m grateful we can tell our kids we are all fully vaccinated and their parents are boosted.
The other big question right now is whether I am asymptomatic or really just pre-symptomatic? I sit waiting and wondering if the symptoms I fear will materialize. Will I get really sick? Will someone in my family get really sick? The great unknown is terrifying.
For now, we count days and wander our house masked, mixing science and religion with a prayer that science continues to protect our home and those around us.