Everyone Got Better

Last Saturday Lee-Anne got a negative test for COVID. We celebrated by going to a smaller local restaurant that we hadn't been to before. It felt appropriate to go somewhere cramped with necessary social interactions to celebrate not having a communicable disease.

I got the chicken and waffles, probably my most diabettically unfriendly meal since being diagnosed. Fried chicken on dough with maple syrup. Never had it before. Seemed aggregious. 

I've been experimenting with certain foods to test my body's ability to manage insulin. The first test was a waffle with jam, which was the first meal to put me out of my glucose target range. A year later I revisited it and I was fine. At another point, my sugars spiked after drinking a mimosa. Recently I had a glass of orange juice and it barely effected me.

Chicken and waffles is not an intuitive meal for a Southern Ontarian. I had pictured it as a chicken sandwich with waffles replacing the bread, although I had heard accounts of the waffles being treated traditionally, with maple syrup. Despite a cutural bias in favour of the sauce, to me it made no sense with chicken. Ultimately, enough people were vouching for it that it piqued my interest.

To my surprise, the savouriness of the chicken combined with the sweetness of the syrup was pretty pleasant. Something about the waffles themselves worked with the chicken too.

On Sunday, my mother and brother tested negative for COVID. Duncan still hasn't fully recovered his sense of taste and smell, but I heard on the radio that the rapid tests don't determine whether you're infected, but rather if you're infectious. So while he's not fully recovered, he shouldn't be a danger to anyone.

Earlier in the pandemic, it was my intention to announce my status should I ever contract the illness. However, when it finally came time for me, I didn't feel the need to. At first, if you heard that someone in your sphere had caught it, the instinct was to wish for their recovery, as it seemed possible that they wouldn't survive. Nowadays, people just say "It's going around" when you let people know that someone got COVID.

I've gotten a little better at doing these rapid tests. I swab my cheeks, tounge, and the back of my nose when I do them. It usually results in lots of gagging and sneezing, as it did while I was testing during my sick period. 

By the end however, I was able to forego gagging, and was managing to stave off sneezing until I finished swabbing. I'd still sneeze at the end, though.