{"id":5129,"date":"2022-07-22T16:33:28","date_gmt":"2022-07-22T14:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/?p=5129"},"modified":"2022-07-22T16:45:30","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T14:45:30","slug":"covid-sucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2022\/07\/22\/covid-sucks\/","title":{"rendered":"Covid sucks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>We were at a wedding two weekends ago, and used the busy Eurostar from Amsterdam to London to get there. The train journey was lovely, but that&#8217;s probably where I picked up the disease. When we got back on the Sunday evening I had a sore throat. The following morning it was worse, and I tested positive for the coronavirus: an angry red T line that appeared even before the liquid had crept up to the C. We&#8217;ve been very cautious over for the last two years, and attending the wedding was a calculated risk. We masked as much as we could, but the dice rolled against us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fortunately we have a guest room with an en-suite bathroom that allows us to isolate from the rest of the household. Although Abi&#8217;s test on the Monday morning was negative, she wasn&#8217;t feeling great. As a precaution to shield Alex and Fiona, Abi joined me in the isolation chamber on Tuesday evening, and by Thursday she was testing positive as well. We&#8217;ve used Albert Heijn home delivery to keep the groceries flowing. Without a fridge, we&#8217;ve been living mostly on <a href=\"https:\/\/nl.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mueslibol\">mueslibollen<\/a>, cheese, and dry Kellogg&#8217;s cereal straight from the packet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was a rough ride. It&#8217;s only in the last couple of days that I&#8217;ve been starting to feel like myself again. After a week of nothing, my sense of smell has partly returned. Yesterday I actually felt <em>bored<\/em>, which was interesting. Until then I&#8217;d had a hard time concentrating on anything for any length of time. I&#8217;ve had a couple of books in here with me, but I only managed to finish one of them. We&#8217;ve watched some movies &amp; TV shows together in the evenings, but mostly I&#8217;ve been feeling too exhausted to move or think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yesterday was a psychological low point. As well as feeling bored, I was starting to despair that this would <em>ever<\/em> end. We&#8217;ve been testing every day, and although my T line was <em>fainter<\/em> than the C line, I wasn&#8217;t seeing much change from day to day. I was scared that my immune system just wasn&#8217;t up to the task of clearing the virus, and that I&#8217;d still be in this state for weeks: the line getting slowly fainter, asymptotically approaching invisibility. Fiona is moving out <em>next week<\/em>. I&#8217;m upset that I haven&#8217;t been around with them for the last two weeks, and the thought of seeing them off to the airport in a taxi on Tuesday morning was painful. I had wanted these last couple of weeks at home to play out very differently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today, however, I tested and it was negative. I hardly dared to get my hopes up when a few minutes passed and there was still no line. But when 15 and 30 minutes went by and the T was still clear, I felt cautious relief. I&#8217;m still coughing, but that&#8217;s normal for me. (I have shitty lungs. I&#8217;ve never met a respiratory infection that didn&#8217;t love them.) My sense of smell isn&#8217;t all the way back, but at least it&#8217;s recovering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2022\/covid-tests-july-2.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"521\" src=\"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2022\/covid-tests-july-2-1024x521.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5137\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2022\/covid-tests-july-2-1024x521.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2022\/covid-tests-july-2-300x153.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2022\/covid-tests-july-2-768x391.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2022\/covid-tests-july-2-1536x781.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2022\/covid-tests-july-2-2048x1042.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>Progression of my recent Covid tests, from Day 7 (18 July) to Day 11 (22 July). Day 0 was day of first positive test, Monday 11 July.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Abi is still testing positive, but her line is faint now as well, and today her C line appeared before the T line did. Also progress! But because we really don&#8217;t want to run the risk of Fiona testing positive on Tuesday morning before their flight, or Alex testing positive on Friday before we head off on our big road trip, I&#8217;m going to stay in isolation until tomorrow. If tomorrow&#8217;s test is negative as well, though, I&#8217;ll exit. I&#8217;ll probably keep wearing a mask around the house. Risk management is all about impact assessments and trade-offs. The impact of Alex or Fiona getting infected in the next few days would be <em>really high<\/em>, so extra caution is warranted. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We were at a wedding two weekends ago, and used the busy Eurostar from Amsterdam to London to get there. The train journey was lovely, but that&#8217;s probably where I picked up the disease. When we got back on the Sunday evening I had a sore throat. The following morning it was worse, and I &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2022\/07\/22\/covid-sucks\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Covid sucks&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,17,12],"tags":[1919,1850,1920,1822],"class_list":["post-5129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-family","category-personal","tag-covid","tag-health","tag-isolation","tag-test"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5129"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5139,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5129\/revisions\/5139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}