Let's Talk About “Mild” Covid

January has not been my favorite.

Friends, apologies for the newsletter silence this week. As Friday Thread readers know, every member of my household got Covid last week. We are all recovering well and are extremely lucky that it has been “mild.” So mild that at first I wasn’t going to write about it, because it’s not particularly dramatic or anything. It’s just a story of crummy annoyances and inconveniences and this might read like the most depressing “What I Did Last Summer” ever? But I talked about the experience a bit in my Instastories yesterday and a bunch of you said it was helpful, to compare notes, to answer questions, to just share in the collective angst that is parenting/existing in a pandemic, still. I guess sometimes it really matters to hear about these things from someone you kinda know on social media! So, here we go.

My 4-year-old solved the testing shortage.

How It Started

On the Friday before MLK Weekend, we were notified that both of our kids had been potentially exposed to positive cases at school. We’re guessing this is where we got it? The weird wrinkle is that I had just gotten over a stomach bug, that we ruled out as Covid with four negative tests. I also wore a mask around my family while we were figuring that out. But! Who can say! I can say that we, as a household, had stopped socializing or going anywhere other than school, the grocery store, and the occasional restaurant to dart in (with an N95 on) for takeout at the end of December. Doing everything right is not a guarantee.

Everyone felt fine over the weekend, but my husband woke up on MLK Day with a sore throat. He was positive and so was our 8-year-old. After almost two years of organizing our entire lives around not getting Covid, it was very surreal to have Covid in the house. Our 8-year-old is medically fragile due to an underlying heart condition, so she, especially, has been our biggest fear. And yet she was zooming around on her hoverboard, apparently fine.

We decided that they would isolate in our home office in an attempt to keep our 4-year-old and myself from catching it. Because my January luck has been so awesome, I had also sprained my ankle on our icy driveway earlier that morning, and so now I was looking at solo parenting a preschooler while being unable to walk. My sister, who lives three hours away, got in her car and started driving down to help us. (Sisters are heroes!) Around 5pm, our 4-year-old spiked a fever, but tested negative a second time. Still, we knew where this was going. My sister left a bag of cold medicine and ankle bandages outside our door and drove to a hotel. (Still a hero.)

By lunchtime on Tuesday, my throat was sore and the 4-year-old was positive. By Wednesday morning, I was positive. (Yes, that means we each had two negative tests before we tested positive. Don’t trust that first negative test!¹)

Last Tuesday, when I was the last negative test standing but also should not have been standing on that ankle.

How It’s Going

Our vaccines absolutely worked. I am so grateful. I think my 8-year-old’s two shots are the reason that her symptoms mostly amounted to “feeling hot,” (without a true fever) and extra tired for a few days. She was back to her normal energy level in under five days and tested negative on her day 7.

Our 4-year-old is too young to be vaccinated and as I write this, on her day 9, is still testing positive. But after 24 hours of sniffles, fever and a bad headache, she started to feel better. Lack of appetite and exhaustion (long naps!) lasted for three or four days. Her energy then returned to her normal level of “excessively bouncy,” which is great except for the fact that our school requires a negative test to return in under 10 days so… she’s still here.

Dan and I are both vaccinated and boosted and yet we had it much worse. (But not hospital worse! The vaccines did their job!) Dan was sickest, fastest. This is a guy who ran a 50 mile race last year and chops wood for fun, so I panicked a little when he tried to carry bedding up to the office for their isolation campout and said the duvet was “so heavy.” He felt awful for most of last week and is better now but still more exhausted than I’ve ever seen him, and still testing positive on his day 10. In addition to being ridiculously physically active, Dan is thin. I asked him how he identifies in terms of body size and he says his preferred terms are “lithe,” “athletic,” “svelte but powerful” and “carved from marble.” I’ll present that without comment, except to say: He’s thinner than me. And does way more cardio. And neither of those facts saved him. I see an awful lot of thin, white people on social media pinning their Covid odds on their fitness level, so let’s just be clear: This virus isn’t checking your weight or your Fitbit first.

For me, “mild” covid has felt like a cross between the first trimester of pregnancy, a migraine and a head cold. My congestion and sore throat faded quickly, but I had chills and all over aches for several more days. I’ve also been so exhausted I’ve napped on three separate days, something I didn’t even do during pregnancy. It’s also very up and down: I’ll have a few hours of feeling fine and functional and then crash so hard I can barely lift my head off the pillow. I’m a mostly-daily bed-maker and I haven’t done that in a week because the prospect sounds exhausting. Friends with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome talk about this needing to conserve your energy and chunk out what you can done before the brain fog descends, and yes. Yesterday (my Day 7) and today have felt better; I recorded a podcast and wrote next week’s essay yesterday. Today I spoke on a virtual panel and am now writing this, and I’m not yet dead. But that is maybe 25 percent of what I get done in a normal work day. It’s disconcerting—and definitely making me confront my ableism—to realize more is not an option right now.

I did make toast a lot. With Marmite. Very on brand.

The Five Day Lie

There are so many ways we are asking more, too much, way too much of everyone right now. We’re asking too much of teachers, we’re asking too much of kids, we’re asking too much parents. You’ve read all the same smart think pieces that I have and feel the same primal rage. And capitalism is asking too much workers, especially now that the CDC says a 5 day isolation is plenty and you can get right back to work after that, with or without a test. At some point last week, I realized I had bought into this too: I was counting down to everyone’s day 5 and expecting negative tests² and a resolution of all symptoms. I assumed the CDC decision was rooted in some evidence that because Omicron is milder, it also clears faster.

Everyone in our house was still positive on day 5. The adults were also still symptomatic, in ways that both prevented us from working and would have made us a risk to others if we had gone back out in the world. We are incredibly privileged to have work-from-home jobs with a lot of flexibility. We were able to take sick days when we couldn’t work, and then tag team when we could work, but still had a positive 4-year-old home from preschool. I appreciate that nobody mass-unsubscribed this week when I paused on sending out content. I cried when my book editor sent a sweet note saying not to worry if I need to push my deadline. And yet I still worried/am worried about the ripple effects of mostly not working for two weeks. We are asking an obscene amount of workers and we are surely also contributing to the pandemic’s spread by rushing people back to work before they’re better.

The Kids Are… Alright

A lot of people on Instagram wanted to know how we managed to parent our Covid-having kids while having Covid ourselves and there is only one answer and that is: iPads. Also the Nintendo Switch which Dan finally started lending to our 8-year-old who is now thoroughly obsessed with Animal Crossing. We leaned in hard and immediately to screen time because we were all sick, and we didn’t know how long we would be sick, or how much worse it would get, and achieving rest was so clearly the most important/only goal. The upshot was the kids were thrilled to have such unprecedented free rein over their devices and we were all less stressed. And, towards the end of last week, I saw signs that just like with sugar, kids can regulate themselves around technology.³ The 4-year-old started madly crafting. The 8-year-old picked up the first Harry Potter and is now racing through the whole series.⁴ They both asked to go play outside, where it is four degrees and just why. This week, we’ve had just one kid home, which is both easier and harder and yes, one day, she watched “Inside Out” twice.

I want to be clear that even though their cases were mild and their screen-time plentiful, I am sure the experience of finally having Covid, along with living so much of their lives in a pandemic, is impacting my kids, just like it’s impacting all kids in ways it will take years to fully grasp. But for what it’s worth, our family also has a lot of experience with the really bad, ICU kind of sick, and it was so, so good that this wasn’t that. It so easily could have been that.

So, here we are. Saturday is my Day 10. Next week, both my children will be back in school. Burnt Toast will resume its regular publication schedule. We will get back to normal, and by normal I mean back to the same mess we’re all, somehow, finding our way through. I don’t quite know how we’re all still doing this thing, but we are. Thank you for doing it. I’m glad to be here with you.

1. Some folks on Insta wanted to know how we were able to test so much. (As a household we have now taken 29 rapid tests in two weeks. We also paid $700 out of pocket for same day rapid PCR tests to confirm results.) We had luckily over-ordered on tests over the holidays and had 8 saved. Our kids’ school gave us 4 more and we were able to order another 18 (yes) online that thankfully arrived. Plus the government-sponsored four freebies, of course! Nice little country we have here.

2. We tested everyone starting on day 5 because our kids’ school is doing a better job than the CDC and requires a negative test (plus no symptoms) to return. Yes we have spent over $1000 on tests, even with Biden’s four pack.

3. I think screens and sugar have a lot of parallels, but are not totally equate-able. I’ll write more about that sometime.

4. I’m rereading them too, a book behind her, and yes, looking for all the opportunities to talk about the many toxicities of JK Rowling. And feeling a little sad that this can’t just be a lovely family bonding activity.