Positive Songs For Negative Times #59: My Covid Diary (Part 2)

The Red Arrows, flying over our house the day before we all went into Covid Lockdown.

(Really, they're just about visible if you expand the picture enough!)

My PCR test results came back at 7am on Monday morning. Louise & Sam didn't get theirs till late Wednesday afternoon. Louise, despite having done three lateral flow tests that came back negative, was positive on the PCR. Sam's test was inconclusive. Because... well, you try getting an 8 year old to stick something up their nose that isn't their index finger. It's not as easy as it might sound.

With Louise & I now confined to the house, we wondered how to get Sam tested again. Initially we were told we could get a home test kit sent... which took another 24 hours to arrive... only to be missing a vital part of the package: a security seal we were supposed to use when sending the sample.

"Can we not just return the package without the seal?"

"Well, you could, but you would be liable for it."

That sounded a bit ominous, so we asked if we could get another test sent out, please... at which point we were told it would be OK to break house arrest in order to take Sam to a drive-thru test centre. Which we did. This time, the nostrils were given thorough scrutiny. (Kids don't have to do the back of the throat thing... although that does mean their results are less reliable.)

Sam was feeling much better by this point, and ready to go back to school. Louise and I were both feeling pretty grotty... even more grotty when we were told that all the delays meant that Sam's lockdown would have to be extended beyond 10 days, just because it'd taken so long to get a positive result back for him.

Look, I'm not blaming the NHS for this. These things happen, and god knows they've had far more serious things to deal with over the past year and a half than a not-that-poorly 8 year old's PCR test... if I was going to start whinging, I'd have far more to say about the neighbours, who had their builders in for most of the week, constantly drilling and knocking down an internal wall to an extension that it's taken them 8 months to build... but actually, as aggravating as that was, the neighbours have my sympathy too, because their builders are a bunch of absolute cowboys who have been stringing out a pretty simple job far longer than it needed.

Sorry, I'm getting off the point. How bad was our covid? Well, for Sam, who had it first, his recovery was pretty swift. After that first tricky night, at least. It took him a while for his energy levels to return, but he's back to tearing around the garden pretending to be famous footballers I've never heard of now. For Louise and I, recovery is taking a little longer. I'd best describe our symptoms as "mild flu", coupled with the eventual loss of taste and smell I mentioned last week (Louise was most horrified when she could no longer taste chocolate), but once that passed, the post-viral fatigue set in. Our immune systems are low, which means we're also catching every autumn cold going... but we're slowly getting back to normal.  

And it's nice to be able to go out again. While under house arrest, you get regular calls from the NHS, checking you're obeying your curfew, and one day we even got a visit from the local Covid Police to check we were still at home and not out partying. They pretend they're asking if there's anything you need, but really they're making sure you're staying in. I know this because when Louise told him she desperately needed chocolate (this was before she lost her taste!), he just laughed and carried on reading from his clipboard. He didn't offer to pop down the local shop for her.

The only upside to all this is that, following my enforced 10 day lock down, the doctor wrote me off for a further two weeks of "post covid recovery". (Tip: if calling your local GP about post-covid fatigue, don't mention covid to the receptionist. They appear to be programmed to reject anything covid-related and send you back to NHS Direct... but NHS Direct can't write you a doctor's note. In the end, I had to do an online consultation... although ironically, once an actual doctor read that, they got the receptionist to call me up and book an appointment for immediately after my isolation period.) 

Thus ends my Covid diary. Not the most interesting of tales, but thankfully far less dramatic than many other people's... I guess we should be glad we were both doubled jabbed, while Sam had the immunity of youth. Although maybe if I'd had Ozzy Osborne's immunity, I'd never have caught it at all.

Here's another track from the new Wallflowers album, which is somewhat appropriate since for 10 days there, my garden was the only place I could walk round (thankfully, the weather was fine for most of the time).