Merry Christmas!
My wife tested positive for Covid 19 yesterday, a day before my son, his girlfriend and our nearly year old granddaughter are scheduled to fly in to Ohio from Florida. They should be on the ground at Rickenbacker in just under two hours.
Desiree has family in Crawford county, so their trip won't be a total waste, and this will surely be a Christmas Stacy and I will remember for decades to come.
Here's how things unfolded:
Wednesday, Stacy commented that she wasn't feeling the greatest, her main issue being a runny nose. Wednesdays are when we usually go see our local granddaughter, Mila, for a few hours, so we cancelled that. Didn't want to chance Gramma passing her cold on to our little punkin' pie.
Knowing my oldest and his crew were due in today, Stacy went to a OhioHealth drive-through Covid testing site, just to be safe. She was also tested for influenzas A and B, with instructions to check her test results on line later in the evening.
The flu tests came back negative; Covid, unfortunately, was positive.
Stacy only has a runny nose! No fever, no aches, no cough...nothing else! How can this be?
My bride and I were devastated, as we haven't seen Raelynn since March. Texts and phone calls followed, fast and furiously, delivering the bad news. As I'd read a bulletin from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently warning of possible false-positive Covid test results, Stacy and I cleaned off her Jeep (we were in the midst of what was to become a seven inch snowfall), warmed it up and headed to OhioHealth MedCentral's emergency room for another test...for which she was turned away, after being told their tests have a 96% accuracy rate. They wouldn't retest her as she'd already had one earlier in the day.
So we trekked back home over unplowed roads (it was Christmas Eve, after all), both of us suffering a deep, growing depression. We'd been so excited at the prospect of seeing Raelynn and the kids; now, it seemed an impossibility. Stacy felt the worse of the two of us, expressing that she felt responsible for our predicament.
"Honey, it is NOT your fault", I told her, "I mean, you didn't get infected on purpose, right?"
It didn't help.
Once back at Black Gold Homestead, we had a conversation on what to do next. As of right now, we're both going to be tested Saturday morning at a large chain pharmacy, through appointments made on the internet at 0030...Christmas morning.
As we await Stacy's retest and my test, she's quarantining on the second floor of the house, donning a mask and gloves when she needs to come downstairs and sanitizing everything she touches. She notified the office manager of the physician's office where she works and her two-week lockdown clock started today. She feels much better than she did Wednesday and is constantly taking her temperature, as am I. I feel totally fine and think that I probably had suffered through the dreaded Wuhan flu at the end of June, when I'd been deathly ill with severe digestive issues. I'd gone to an emergency room at its height and they tested me for everything under the sun....except Covid. All my tests had come back negative, and still to this day no one can tell me what I'd been afflicted with back then. I mean, it was so bad that I even let Stacy mow; anyone who knows me well knows how huge that sacrifice had been, as I'm very particular on how our place looks.
Having been exposed, my three-days-a-week cardiac rehab will no doubt be put on hold and I'll probably also have to reschedule my first follow-up visit with my cardiologist since the heart attack, which had been scheduled for the 29th...unless, that is, my test tomorrow comes back negative for Covid tomorrow. In that case, I'm not sure what MedCentral's protocols are.
So, while we await tomorrow, Stacy's upstairs binge-watching 'A Million Little Things' as I'm downstairs typing this entry. Afterwards? Looks like I'll be re-watching my favorite WW II movies In Harm's Way, Midway and Fury, with maybe a side of Avengers thrown in there somewhere.
We'll also be praying that both our tests come back negative tomorrow, so we can see our precious little Raelynn.
Until then, we'll do what we have to do and make the best of this holiest of holidays.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
