COVID’s Mom Called & She Wants You to Put Your Mask Back On

Dear 2020,

Kick rocks.

January: My year started off like everyone else’s at the Lake of the Ozarks with “New Year, new you” sure-fail resolutions comprising of healthier habits, greater social efforts (ha), and tighter budgeting. Luckily for me, I didn’t fall for that new gym membership because, in all honesty, my mouth gives me plenty of exercise. Bass Pro’s Wonders of Wildlife Museum & Aquarium in Springfield lucked out with my annual membership, though. I guess the kids and I will see those cool cats and kittens of Taxidermyville again in 2021.

All things considered, the longest and bleakest month of the year probably should’ve gotten a bit more credit. What we didn't know then: April was coming.

February: I did my best to continue on with life as normal while quietly monitoring the elephant-in-the-room-updates from Asia and Europe. Sure, health officials abroad were continuously warning us that flattening the curve for our healthcare workers would be our best line of defense, and with several immediate family members working for nearby hospitals, hearing about the doctors and nurses in Italy whose lives were consumed with or taken by this virus felt very personal to me. As I read stories about otherwise healthy individuals who were my age but had died from COVID-19, or of major healthcare facilities potentially being faced with the choice of “who lives and who dies” based upon a limited number of ventilators and an overwhelming number of patients, was ultimately heartbreaking. But it was there and not here, right? Also, there were some pretty big ponds in between us.

March: It was the week of St. Patrick’s Day. The number of positive COVID-19 cases in the State of Missouri was reportedly less than 30 people out of 6 million, and there were no known cases in our direct or surrounding counties. We had gone nowhere beyond our direct or surrounding cities, but my social butterfly spouse had begun fighting a low-grade fever. I messaged a few close friends and told them that our family members were needlessly worrying about the prospect of it being COVID-19. The world and all of its normal perils didn’t stop for a pandemic, after all, and these symptoms were probably just allergies, the common cold, or the flu. But we pulled our kids from their respective childcare facilities and began working remotely, just in case.

The day following my husband’s first onset of symptoms, I awoke with a low-grade fever and a faint heartburn-like sensation in my lungs. Everything that I’d read online had indicated that we “should” have a dry cough if it was actually the novel coronavirus, which we did not, and so, like an ostrich with its head in the sand, I continued to believe that we had something else- anything but COVID. By the end of the week, my fever had broken after a few restless nights of sweating through shirts and bed sheets, and although lethargic, my husband and I were beginning to feel better. There was just one minor problem: as suddenly as the mast of a ship appears in a distant blanket of fog, I could no longer taste or smell anything at all.

Between freshly sprayed Lysol and the world’s strongest Mucinex, our toddler’s soiled diaper or a zesty tilapia dinner (I had written "spaghetti" here and my proofreading younger brother called me a plebeian)... you name it, and I could not smell or taste it. I had never in my life experienced anything so unexpected, unexplainable or abrupt. That weekend, I read article after article about this mysterious symptom being a red flag for COVID-19 positive individuals my age throughout the world. Individuals, like me, whose gustatory system had been thrown for a loop by a sudden and utter anosmia following mild viral symptoms. Public health officials in our community were just beginning to report positive cases and they were including the person’s recently frequented public locations. In one case, a hospitalized patient’s place of work was also reported. On a very basic level, this magnitude of ostracizing exposure was terrifying to us, but I also wanted to do the right thing, and so I called our doctor’s office at 8 a.m. that following Monday.

“Have you recently traveled to an area where known outbreaks have occurred?” my primary care physician’s facility asked. “Have you recently been exposed to anyone with a positive COVID-19 case?”

All of our answers were simply… no.

After several conversations throughout the day, and regardless of our symptoms, I was advised that the number of tests in our state were limited and that we did not meet the criteria to be tested. We were given the option to schedule a routine follow-up appointment at our doctor’s office, but as we were one week into our symptoms and didn’t see any reason to go out for anything other than a guaranteed test, we refused. My family unit continued to socially distance ourselves from our extended family, friends, and the general masses of society for weeks, and we lived in uncertainty.

April: The nation kind of… stopped. We were a world in limbo. People had mixed feelings regarding this, as did I. There were just so many unknowns. There was so much widespread fear along with so many divisive viewpoints toward varying states’ shutdowns or lack thereof. “Hold my beer, January,” said April. January laughed, bowing emphatically.

May: It had been 50 days since the onset of our symptoms in mid-March. My day had started off like any other day in quarantine, but with one exception: a very close friend of mine had reached out to me earlier that week with a list of symptoms which wholly mirrored mine from months before. After testing, that friend had received a call from the Department of Health, advising that they had come back positive for COVID-19. Finally, my husband and I were loosely vindicated in our previously-untested-but-surely-positive-plight, even if just speculatively!

Our local community had begun returning to life as normal (well, as normal as life gets while sanitizing after touching every door handle and wearing masks to and fro). As a Missourian, it really seemed like we went from zero to one hundred in about five seconds. Like spry teenagers recently freed from a six week-long grounding, this was some invigorating, post-quarantined whiplash! Again, I could see both sides of the spectrum with this. I wanted to return to work and see our economy thrive, but I also wanted to keep our hospital workers safe and society’s most vulnerable healthy.

Ultimately, we’ve got to accept that our opinion doesn’t change anyone else’s reality. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.

June: By now, Missouri was reporting our then-largest single-day increases in COVID-19 positive cases. From a subjective standpoint, it seemed that we were living largely upon the pursuit of our own civil liberties, and I’m a direct part of that generalization myself, so there’s no subtle shade being thrown here, people. My children had returned to their respective childcare facilities, and my husband and I were going about life as normally as we could, albeit with reasonable caution.

Then someone posted online about paying for a locally available antibody test. They had symptoms back in February that just had to be COVID-19, but alas, they were negative for any trace of it. By now, I’d heard that even positive antibodies could not guarantee that an individual would never contract the disease again, and with different strands continuously evolving, my desire to test for antibodies was mostly out of sheer curiosity. What were the odds of being one in 30 out of six million in March?

So I booked the appointment. I paid $119.00 to drive to Jefferson City and finally, finally know. Friends and family waited for me to hear back — all as sure as I was that I’d have antibodies. And wouldn’t you know, for $119.00, I was told… no. Nope. Negative.

NO ANTIBODIES? WHAT? HOW?

The loss of taste and smell had lasted for more than two weeks before it slowly returned. My symptoms had matched identically with a friend’s confirmed positive case, and I almost felt… cheated. I was one of those people that just knew they’d had it before, kind of like those who claim they’re 20 percent Native American and you’re like, yeah, okay Pocahontas. I had endured the most annoying first-world side effect known to man- chewing delicious food for weeks with no gratification other than a full freaking stomach, and it was all for naught. Hats off to the conspiracy theorists, because COVID-19’s rules were made up and the points didn’t matter.

July: That one friend? (They’re pretty awesome, by the way.) That one friend didn’t give up on my quandary, my strife, and my desperate need to be equally justified for my suffrage and subsequent survival. I mean, I could forever hold this over my social butterfly husband’s head: “In the event of a global pandemic, you would literally kill me in 2.3 seconds. No need to stock up on toilet paper or hoard hand sanitizer, honey. Jesus has us covered.”

Anyway, that one friend had heard about the American Red Cross checking for antibodies FOR FREE if you went and donated blood. They were in desperate need for donations and I could help them while double-checking the accuracy of my $119.00 expenditure? Win-win, count me in! The accuracy rates for these antibody tests were not 100 percent, I knew that, and so I signed us both up to donate blood so as to double our odds of an accurate reading. One last time, I would check. If we both came back negative, dammit, I’d be Poca-freaking-hontas.

A liter-o-cola in blood later to the American Red Cross (not really, but it felt like it), and we were out the door. I felt a fleeting shimmer of hope that I might indeed have a secret weapon now. An unseen defense against the fearmongering, media-blasted reports of this widespread virus, and, and we could potentially donate our antibody-ridden plasma to help others fight this off.

And just like that, after months of feeling wheedled, robbed, and swindled out of our own basic HIPAA knowledge, we both tested… Positive.

Our known blood types matched identically on our listed results, and knowing that our donation had been made to a 139-year-old humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, and that it would directly impact others’ lives in a life-and-death kind of way, made me feel that we could trust this answer.

So, 1,800 words later and you’re probably wondering oh my goodness, this person’s story will literally never end. But this is the end. If you’re in doubt, donate. If you’re positive, give some plasma, too. Who knows, it might save someone’s life someday.