We were the lucky ones. We had avoided COVID for almost 2 1/2 years in spite of having been exposed numerous times, right from the beginning. Our first encounter was at a conference in Washington DC at the end of February, 2020. We received a notice when we arrived home that we had been exposed and we had to quarantine before everyone else. By the time the entire nation went into quarantine on March 18 (my birthday, so it is easy to remember) we were pros. We thought that the whole thing would blow over in a few weeks and life would get back to normal. Well it didn’t get back to normal, but we did the best that we could given the circumstances.
Wearing a mask became a chore. We forgot to pack them when going places. But every venue had plenty for those of us who forgot. My skin was a disaster from wearing masks, so I went without more and more often.
And we began to travel again. First to Chicago to see our grandchildren. A few short trips within California just to get away. We got more daring and took a cruise to Antarctica. Then Hawaii and Chicago again. We kept dodging the COVID bullet, so we did not think twice about attending a wedding in Boston over Memorial Day weekend. The weekend was wonderful. We did a lot of sightseeing. We even went to a baseball game at Fenway Park. We flew home on Tuesday, feeling great.
And then it hit. First Mr. Twitchy. I had gone to Phoenix for a conference on Thursday. I had tested myself that morning, since we had been traveling, and it was negative. Mr. T had taken a test on Wednesday morning that was also negative. Later that evening he emailed me that he was not feeling well and took a COVID test. Positive! I was feeling fine and I had my second booster shot the week before. So I wore my mask everywhere and tried to keep my distance from everyone. I flew home on Friday afternoon.
Sunday morning, I woke up with it. What is interesting is that we had very different symptoms. Mr. Twitchy had the worst sore throat of his life for 2 days, a classic Omicron symptom. He said it felt like gargling glass. I never had a sore throat, but had a fever and congestion. And we were both fatigued.
This is not your average fatigue. It is bone-crushing, can’t move fatigue. Any exertion led to a minimum of 30 minutes lying down to recover. Just emptying the dishwasher put me out for 2 hours on the sofa. Even reading was too strenuous. I would fall asleep after just one page and wake up an hour or more later, not feeling rested at all.
Fortunately we are both on the road to recovery and we hope to be able to get out of the house again in a few days. But we are out of test kits, which are like Monopoly’s Get Out of Jail Free card. The bottom line is that we are ok. It wasn’t as bad as the flu. More like a bad cold. We are looking forward to getting bak out into the world again, good as new.
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