5 Fives on Friday: Getting Covid in 2024 Edition

Guess who just got booted from the “only had Covid once” club?! Yep! It’s me!

Boooooo!

Here are some thoughts on having Covid a second time, two years after my first time and 4.5 years after the initial lock down.

5 days in the symptom timeline

• Monday my throat was twingy but I really thought it could be allergies or something else. By the evening I still wasn’t sure, but still went to the Pulp concert and drank and danced and had a great time, because I felt pretty much fine. Monday night I could not sleep at all and by Tuesday morning I felt pretty awful.
• Tuesday I tested positive for Covid immediately. Like the minute the liquid hit the test line it was bright pink. I put on a mask, opened the windows and let my husband know. I also put in for a sub. Then I made the kids’ lunches and headed to work, so I could get ready for said sub. I spent an hour in my car in the parking lot finalizing sub plans, then made some copies, dropped them off and headed home. I felt pretty bad on Tuesday – no fever but lots of body aches and shivering then sweating. It wasn’t great. I was surprised that night to realize I probably wouldn’t feel well enough to go to school again on Wednesday, so I put in for another sub and wrote sub plans and posted work on google classroom. Luckily, Wednesday is my light day so it wasn’t that hard to pull stuff together.
• Wednesday I felt pretty bad in the morning – more body aches and sweating then shivering. I took three short naps, which is unheard of for me, even when sick. I was freaking out that I’d have to take yet another day off (Thursdays are impossible days for me to be out), but by 3pm I started feeling better. I had been isolating downstairs, but my husband had to stay at work and then go to Daughter’s Back-to-School-Night, so Son was going to be upstairs alone for a LONG period of time, so I came up with a mask on and we watched a movie together from far ends of the living room (with the windows open and the air purifier near me cranking).
• Thursday I went back to work with a mask on. I felt pretty decent all day, despite no breaks (not even for lunch because I had to recruit kids for yearbook during the Club Fair). By the time I got home I was pretty exhausted.
• Friday has been much of the same. I honestly feel pretty much fine at this point. I have a little bit of a stuffy nose, and light cough, but most of the colds I’ve had in the past two years were worse than this on day four.

5 Reasons I really don’t like wearing a mask

I know some people still wear masks out in the world, but I was so happy when that stopped being required. I really dislike wearing a mask, and these are five reasons why.

• They hurt my ears. Even though I wear a strap that holds the back of the ear straps off my ears, they still hurt my ears and eventually give me a headache. I have never found a mask that is effective and doesn’t make my head hurt.
• I can’t wear my glasses. I know people have figured out how to do this, but I have not. I can’t wear contact lenses, so when I’m wearing a mask I really struggle to see. This is especially difficult at work.
• It makes my eyes hurt. Even when I manage to get a good fit on my mask, the air that escapes by my eyes makes my eyes dry and painful. At the end of the day of wearing a mask my eyes actually ache. Like I want to massage them. It’s awful.
• My face breaks out. It broke out before I had rosacea. Now that I have rosacea, it’s even worse.
• It’s so hard to be heard in a mask. Teaching in a mask sucks. It’s the worst. The kids can’t hear me and if they can hear me they can’t really understand me. Teaching a foreign language in a mask is an exercise in futility. Truly, there is nothing I dislike more than trying to teach in a mask.

5 ways having Covid was different this time (two years later)

• The first time I had Covid I had to stay home for 10 days or until I tested negative. I tested positive first (in my family), on a Saturday morning. I believe I tested negative on day nine so I was able to go back to work a day “early.” I missed six work days, and my friend was able to sub for me the entire time (this was HUGE and kept me from losing my mind). The days I missed did not come out of my regular sick leave, they were paid for by the district (through the state I believe).
• This time I missed two days of school, but only because my symptoms required I stay home. Those days will come out of my regular sick leave. I was allowed to come back after that, and I believe it was only “recommended” that I wear a mask. Of course I’m doing that, because it’s what I would want my students to do if they were at school with Covid. If I’m symptom free on Monday, I will probably not be wearing a mask, even if I’m still testing faintly positive. I will keep the air purifier running and the doors and windows open though.
• Last time we totally sequestered ourselves and didn’t go anywhere while we were sick. This time I have taken my son to the dojo and school (with a mask on). Today I’ll probably go shopping while he’s at the dojo, because I was supposed to go earlier this week and we really need food.
• Last time we felt weird telling people we had just had Covid. This time I’m telling all my classes that I’m wearing a mask because I have it. Kids have come up to ask me about it and I’ve told them and it’s fine. The stigma seems to be gone, at least in this community.
• The last two times one of us have had Covid (my husband in June 2023 and me now), we were about to travel (June 2023) or someone is about to travel (my husband next week), so we have isolated the person who has it. I wonder if the next time someone in our family has it, if we’ll bother doing that at all. It’s so hard on the parent who isn’t isolating, I’m just not sure it’s worth it anymore.

5 Covid data points for our family

• We all have had all the vaccinations and boosters available to us, except for the most recent booster, which we were planning to get tomorrow. Husband and kids are still planning on getting it tomorrow, as no one seems to have gotten it from me yet.
• We all had Covid (at basically the same time) in early May of 2022. The immunity that bout provided allowed us to travel to St. Louis, London and Hawaii that summer without getting sick again, despite many close contact situations.
• Daughter had Covid in February of 2023. She had a gnarly cough and we didn’t test her, but instead all went to a small cabin in the snow for the weekend. I ended up sleeping between my kids in a queen bed for two nights, while my daughter basically coughed straight into my open mouth and I didn’t get it. We were all in the car together for long stretches, recycling the air (because it was cold) and no one else got it. We tested her when we got home, before she was supposed to go back to school, and realized she had Covid. I’m still shocked none of us got it from her. Transmission really makes no sense to me.
• Husband got Covid in June of 2023, right before our trip to St. Louis. Again, no one in our family got it from him.
• Son has only tested positive that first time in May of 2022.

5 reactions I’ve had this time around

• Shocked. I have to admit, when the test turned positive so fast I was shocked. I’ve had so many colds in the past two years and I’ve tested every time and they were all negative. To finally test positive again really threw me for a loop.
• Guilty. I felt stupid for not testing the night before and felt bad when I texted all my friends to tell them I tested positive that morning. None of them were upset, but still, I felt like a jerk, even though I really didn’t realize I was sick Monday evening.
• Grateful. At the same time that I felt bad for being near my friends, I was so grateful that I got to see them and hang out. I haven’t seen these high school friends in YEARS and we had such a nice time catching up. The concert was amazing and I’m so glad I got to see Pulp live one last time.
• Nervous. I’ve been nervous all week that my husband (who has a trip next week) or my son (who has a camping trip next weekend) will start feeling sick. I would feel AWFUL if either of them had to miss out on their special plans because I gave them Covid.
• Frustrated. I have been meaning to get the booster for a couple of weeks, but kept pushing it back. If I had gotten it, maybe I wouldn’t have felt as sick, or even tested positive. I know I’m so lucky that our symptoms have always been mild and my family has not suffered any long lasting negative health outcomes from our exposures to Covid. Still, it sucks to be dealing with a sickness that still blows up your life so much more intensely than other random viruses. I just wish I could have avoided it all a little longer.