Well, it finally happened: my dad got COVID-19 back in January. It was nowhere near as bad as it could have been. My dad didn’t have to be hospitalized, and he didn’t suffer any serious side effects. My mom and I didn’t catch it either. Nevertheless, we went through a tough week of quarantine.
The Discovery
Shortly after the first of the year, my dad came home from work feeling sick. My mom and I immediately went into I-told-you-so mode. My dad had refused to wear a jacket or an undershirt to work on the mornings when the temperature had fallen into the 60s and 70s because it was, as he called it, “good weather.” On top of that, he had repeatedly put off getting his annual flu shot, a move that had cost him a $25 gift card from his health insurance company. And now, here he was with the flu.
It was so predictable. This same scenario plays out every single year. He gets sick and spews germs everywhere until my mom and I get sick. Then he gets well a day later. I was not going through it this time. I went into defensive mode. I started spraying Lysol everywhere, wearing a mask when I was around him, and staying in my room as much as possible.
Over the course of the next few days, my dad got sicker. He was coughing, blowing his nose, and not eating. He had to call out at work because he could barely get out of bed. Suddenly, the idea that he might have COVID-19 became a very real possibility. Several people at his job had come down with it recently, after all. As he continued to weaken, we decided to find out for sure.
It was almost impossible to find a place to get tested. One of the last free testing sites open was so busy that people were lining up at 4 AM—and even then, a lot of them still couldn’t get through. The pharmacies and clinics were booked solid too. The best appointment he could get was for a Saturday the following week at a clinic. On top of that, there was some uncertainty about whether my dad’s insurance company would cover the testing fees from those places. If they didn’t, a test would cost him about $200 out of pocket.
Thankfully, things worked themselves out. We called the insurance company and they confirmed that the test would be covered. Then a wonderful nurse took pity on my dad when he went by a clinic in person to see about getting an appointment. She told him to come by at 8 AM the following day to be worked in.
The clinic had a long line full of people without appointments, but that same nurse recognized my dad and called him in. After he was swabbed, he and my mom waited in the car in the clinic’s parking lot until someone called him on the phone to come inside for his results (as per the clinic’s pandemic policy). About half an hour later, the call came. His test was positive. My dad officially had COVID-19.
The Feelings
My dad didn’t take the news well. His initial reaction was embarassment. It wasn’t fair. Both he and my mom had just gotten their Pfizer booster shots a month earlier in December. Plus, he was always diligent about wearing a mask and disinfecting himself. None of his coworkers had taken half as many precautions as he had. Why did he get infected?
More importantly, how did he get infected? We still don’t know. He says he didn’t come into close contact with any of his contagious coworkers, and he kept a healthy distance from everyone else. The only person he came close to was a coworker to whom he gave a ride home a few times. They both had on masks the whole time, but that person might have been unknowingly asymptomatic. Within the tight confines of a car, it would have been easy to get infected.
His next thoughts were financial. As the primary breadwinner, he was understandably upset that he would lose another week of work without knowing if he would be paid for it. Losing that much time without compensation would be devastating to our household. The good news is that when he texted his employer his papers from the clinic showing his positive test result, they agreed to pay him for a normal week’s salary. That took a lot of pressure off his shoulders.
Lastly, he was worried about my reaction to the news. My mom said he told her, “She’s gonna kill me.” I’m a germophobe on the best of days. I had repeatedly asked him to wear a mask since he refused to cover his mouth when he sneezed and coughed. And that was when we thought it was just the flu! I feel bad admitting it, but yes, I was mad at first.
Then the fear hit us all. We had managed to evade the coronavirus for so long. It was scary to think that my 75-year-old father had a virus that had killed and hospitalized millions of people. Moreover, my 60-something-year-old mom has high blood pressure and diabetes, while I’ve always had a somewhat weak immune system (despite being fully vaccinated). We were all in a very dangerous situation.
The Quarantine
Our next step was to go into quarantine for a week. My mom masked up and made a quick trip to the grocery store to grab enough food, drinks, cat stuff, and cold medicine to get us through for a while. She also picked up disinfectant supplies like more Lysol and Clorox wipes.
Then we had to work out the sleeping arrangements. I would continue to stay in my room as much as possible. My dad would stay in my parents’ bedroom. My mom was in a tricky situation. She had slept beside my dad while he was contagious, but she had worn a mask to bed those nights so she wouldn’t get sick (again, we thought he had the flu then). We didn’t know if she was asymptomatic or just not infected. She didn’t want to go back into their room if she didn’t have COVID, but she couldn’t sleep in my room in case she did have it. So, she ended up sleeping on the living room couch.
My dad was on strict lockdown. He couldn’t come out except to go to the bathroom. On those occasions, he had to wear a mask and we heavily disinfected everything he touched afterwards: doorknobs, door frames, the bathroom counter, the toilet, etc. At meal time, we put his food a foldable dinner tray that we set outside the door for him to retrieve after we left the area. We kept the face-to-face meetings to a minimum, primarily checking on him via phone. We didn’t allow our cat Ren to go into the room either just in case.
It didn’t take long for my dad to get bored in there by himself. The living room TV had broken right before the quarantine, so we had swapped it with the TV from my parents’ room. That left him with a small old TV that only has an input for a VHS player. The only option was for me to lend him my new TV and antenna, along with my DVD player. Losing my equipment made the quarantine feel even more suffocating. I could share the TV in the living room with my mom if I wore a mask, but when she went to sleep, I was stuck reading or listening to music. My anxiety levels were through the roof.
Just as we began to run low on food and clean clothes, the quarantine period ended. My dad had improved a lot. He didn’t sound as congested as before, and he had pretty much stopped coughing and sneezing altogether. His appetite had also returned in full force. My mom and I were still in the clear, neither of us having displayed any signs of infection. My dad was allowed to come out of the room for brief periods, though he continued to wear a mask and we continued to disinfect things.
By the next week, my dad was back on the job. He started wearing a KN95 mask instead of his usual surgical mask. He quickly found out, however, that he was still physically weak. He said his legs felt like jelly. He had to drink a lot of orange juice and Pedialyte to build up his strength. It was a solid month before he felt completely “normal” again.
Conclusion
It took me a long time to write this story down. I barely remembered the details. The whole quarantine was a blur in my memories, like my brain’s been blocking that week. I don’t think I’ve fully processed how scared I was. There was so much uncertainty about what was going on and what was going to happen. I felt powerless.
My mom handled the situation like a boss. She was my anchor the entire time. She reassured me that everything would be okay when she knew I was beginning to spiral. I think she provided the same support to my dad, whom we later found out had withheld quite a bit of his actual condition from us so we wouldn’t worry too much. We were very blessed.