Since COVID-19 started spreading across the world, my husband and I have been doing our best to keep our family healthy and happy. We were pretty good at dodging getting sick this year, but a couple of days before Christmas, I woke up with a headache and a little bit of congestion. I just assumed that it was either allergies or a cold since I have asthma, and it’s very normal for me to feel like that. My symptoms continued all day and never got worse or better, so I didn’t think much of it. We did decide to stay home that day though, just to err on the side of caution.
The next morning I felt about the same as I had the day before. I went about my morning as usual and made my iced coffee that I make every day, but when I sipped my iced coffee, I realized it tasted like water. I kept thinking how it was weird but wondered if it was just watered down. But then I remembered that loss of taste and smell was a classic COVID-199 symptom, so I grabbed an essential oil and tried to smell it, but I couldn’t smell a thing.
I was convinced I had COVID-19
When I came to that conclusion, I wasn’t necessarily afraid of being sick — I was more afraid of the unknown. I kept thinking about how I had no help because my husband was at work, so I had no option but to watch my kids — meaning I was exposing them to the virus.
So many thoughts began running through my head and I began to feel extremely anxious. I had just stopped breastfeeding my son and wondered if I should try to bring my supply back up again so he could get my breastmilk and the antibodies in it. I worried that we may have exposed others to the virus before I started to feel any symptoms. I worried about how sick I may get since I have asthma. I worried about how terrible it would be if my husband and kids were to get sick, too.
I didn’t know what to do other than get tested to be certain, so I called my doctor’s office right away to order a test. As the day progressed, my symptoms worsened, and I began to feel more and more worried.
My headache started to feel more like a migraine and my body began to ache
I lost my appetite and I developed a cough that sounded very strange, almost like a barking or a croup cough. I also had a low-grade fever and was feeling extremely fatigued. I was home alone with the kids, so I tried my best to keep them entertained, but I ended up having to just sit them in front of the TV until my husband got home from work.
The next day was Christmas Eve, and my husband had to take over watching the kids for most of the day. I would lie down upstairs for a few hours, then after I had rested for a while, I would come back downstairs to spend time with my family. When my symptoms became unbearable, I would go back upstairs. To make matters worse, my husband also began to feel sick.
In a perfect world, we would have preferred to quarantine away from our children once our symptoms began, but we had nobody to help watch them and we were both sick, so there really wasn’t anything we could do. Fortunately, our kids seemed completely fine physically and mentally. The same couldn’t be said for us.
We were so sick and fatigued, we could barely manage to do anything other than take care of the kids. We had to take turns watching them and would switch off every few hours based on who was feeling worse at the time. We took advantage of all of the food and grocery delivery apps we could in order to make our lives easier.
It was complete survival mode
We just had to keep reminding ourselevs that we just had to do whatever we could to get through those few weeks.
Our daughter enjoyed lots of screen time, lots of junk food, and every day was pajama day. She was having a difficult time not seeing any friends or going to school, but we were just glad she was already on winter break so she only technically missed one week. Our son was on a good schedule at the time and is a pretty happy baby, so thankfully he wasn’t affected by our self-quarantine.
It definitely wasn’t the holidays we had expected, but despite being a little bitter about how it all went, we’re grateful that we were able to manage our symptoms from home and our children were happy and healthy. Others aren’t so lucky, and that’s not something we’ll ever take for granted.
