First COVID Test

Well, I recently got to check off a box in my pandemic bingo book. Until yesterday I'd managed to go this long without having to take a COVID test. I'd been sick once before but since Lee-Anne had been my only exposure and she got sick first, she went in to get tested and after her results came back negative we opted to just continue quarantining.

About a week ago, Lee-Anne developed a bad head cold. I felt fine all through the week and was feeling pretty confident, but right when she started to feel better, I got a tickle in the back of my throat. I told myself I was psyching myself out, but as I got up the next day I found that it was definitely not all in my mind. I've had about the same symptoms she had for about three days now.

We've got these at-home rapid tests, convenient enough that there was really no reason not to use one, even though I'd caught it from Lee-Anne again. In my last post, I've already said that these rapid tests have their limits. The assessment you get if you go into a clinic tells you whether or not there's any COVID in your system, whereas these home ones don't tell you if you're infected, they just tell you if you're infectious.

I'd heard varying reports about how bad the tests are. My mother said that it was no big deal, whereas my aunt said that it was a misery that she wouldn't wish on her worst enemy. After going through it, I'd have to say I'm definitely on the side of not liking them.

I have to be one of the last people I know to never have had one done. So you probably know this already, but you take a cotton swab, stick it up your nose until you "feel resistance", twist it around for five seconds, do the other nostril with the same swab, then you stick it in a little beaker with solution. Let the solution stand, then drop some of the liquid into this device. Let it sit for 15 minutes. If two bars show up on the device, you're contagious. If only the top one does, you're not. If only the bottom one does, you didn't collect enough for it to determine a result.

I was happy that it would tell you if you screwed up, and I was relieved that both me and Lee-Anne got a clear single bar at the top, clearly negative.

Sticking the swab up my nose tickled and burned a lot and made me sneeze like crazy. It goes against every human instinct to put something that far up your nose.

I was told today by a coworker though, that apparently doing just the nasal swab isn't good enough for the Omicron variant, and that you need to swab your cheeks and the back of your throat as well. Well, we have three more tests so I'll probably do it.

While we're talking about my lack of wellness, about a month ago I was making potato pancakes. We had a new grater, which attached to a bason that sets on the counter. I was holding the bason between the thumb and index finger of my left hand, and alternating between grating and squeezing water out of the grated potatoes. I managed to finish all the potatoes, but then suddenly started to feel a sharp stinging sensation in my left thumb.

My thumb swelled up and was in a lot of pain for a while. Eventually, the pain went away and I regained some mobility, enough to button a shirt, fasten a seatbelt, and shuffle a deck of cards. But my thumb is still swollen, over a month later, and this could just be it's new natural state.