Almost a week ago today, I found out that my beautiful friend tested positive for Covid-19. While we figured out that she could have been exposed to the virus after the last time we caught up, I couldn't help but wonder and worry if I too was carrying the virus. I immediately thought about the times when I woke up with a sore throat, coughed here and there, as well as nurse a mild temperature. Call it psychosomatic, but these symptoms immediately started to flare up.
I asked your Dad that night to ring the Covid-19 hotline. For someone who is quite strong and brave, these are the days when I am extra grateful for your Dad, his high sense of concern and his scientific mind. Following that phone call, because I still had a mild temperature, and I couldn't NOT know if I was indeed carrying this virus, Daddy and I agreed that we would go to our local hospital's Covid clinic the following morning.
It was quite confronting to tell you guys in the morning that you could no longer go to school for the rest of the term, as we had intended for you to still attend that day to finish up, and that we needed to go to the hospital for potentially all of us to be tested for the Coronavirus. How can we prevent you from worrying?
Upon arrival, we were met with a number of people already waiting to be tested. It was busy and just got busier. The doctors/nurses were pretty adamant with meeting the testing criteria. Have you arrived from overseas in the last 14 days or have you had direct contact with someone that has tested positive? If you answer no to either of these, you were denied testing and sent to see your GP instead.
They allowed all four of us to queue up for the testing but because I was the only who caught up with my friend, they denied testing for you and Daddy. They would test you if I returned a positive result.
I am not sure if you saw, but the test itself was quite uncomfortable, a swab down the throat and another swirl up the nostril. We were sent home with further information to read, and told that our family had to isolate together until I receive the results which would take 5-7 days.
Thank goodness that we did a full grocery shop on the weekend as we had to go straight home from the hospital. Our family quarantine had started.
Thank goodness for my work and Daddy's work organising for us to work from home the week before so we were able to continue to work. Online learning had began for the both of you. We are so grateful to your beautiful teachers for their hard work in ensuring that you continue your learning. We received a weekly timetable of the activities you needed to do. Your individual music lessons, now online continued, and you both found ways to stay connected with your friends, classmates and teachers. Noah, I loved hearing your 3.15pm daily zoom with your mates, and I loved reading the online conversations that went on in each of your google classrooms. Thank you too for inviting me to do Smiling Minds with you.
I am grateful for your resilience. Each of you just got on with our week, and our family isolation.
While you guys were coping well, it was probably around Thursday when I started to feel the reality of the isolation. I was hoping that I would be lucky enough to get my results earlier than the prescribed 5-7 days as I had heard from others that their results were turned around in less than 3 days. While I was hoping that we would be able to do our grocery shop on the weekend, when Ninong, my brother, offered to do our weekly shop on the Friday, I had to accept as we were starting to run low on staples. We were grateful for the shopping he delivered as well as the first face to face contact that all four of us had since the Monday morning.
Saturday was day 5. The day came and went without a word about my results. I rang a number of places including the hospital to follow up, only to be told to be patient. Both of you would know that patience is not one of Mummy's strong traits. I tried to convince myself that not hearing from them was a good thing as they were probably prioritising the positive cases. Instead I tidied and cleaned.
I managed to sort out your clothes, my clothes, your books and the drawers full of letters/bills while, you built an indoor cubby house, started a 1000pc jigsaw puzzle and played outside as much as the weather would let you.
When the wave of isolation sadness would come, I would remind myself that our family is still very lucky as the both of you were coping so well, and that Daddy and I still have our jobs.
This morning, Daddy decided to follow up with the hospital again, only to be told that the same thing. The hospital did give him the idea to ring our GP tomorrow morning as they may have received the results. Following that, we got the idea to to ring the hospital's medical centre as the GP there might be able to help us. God must have heard our family prayers last night as Daddy was able to speak with someone from the Covid clinic. As we thought, the clinic was prioritising informing those with positive results, and that they had a backlog of people with negative results to ring. Mummy's results are negative!
It is important for me to write this to you so that one day, you will learn of how proud I am of each of you during this time. Noah, Eliza, as we keep hearing, these are unprecedented days. We are all experiencing history in the making. In my life, never have schools closed globally for unknown periods, Extra curricular activities are being cancelled. Holidays are being cancelled, Shops are closing. We are all being asked to stay home to protect each other.
I know that this isn't easy for Mummy and Daddy so I can only imagine how much harder this is for you. I know how disappointed both of you are that Nanny and Grandad are no longer visiting us, that we have cancelled our Japan holiday, all your weekend sports have been cancelled, and we haven't seen Lola and your cousins in ages. Eliza, you are worried how we are going to celebrate your birthday in a couple of weeks!
Daddy and I are grateful that you allow us to share in your disappointments, as well as share your understanding of the situation, and your optimism, that one day, we will all do the things we love to do again.
Your resilience, patience, and positive outlook allows Mummy and Daddy to manage the severity of today's situation so much better than expected.
Thank you guys!
In the meantime, we can go back to half our normality for now!
With all my love
Mum x
