I don’t know anyone with Covid… well, now you do.

After 13 months of social distancing diligence, hand sanitizer usage until I no longer had fingerprints to wake my iPhone, I was shocked when I was recently diagnosed Covid positive.

I live in a “hotspot” postal code within Toronto. I regard myself as super privileged as a pre-pandemic remote worker. I rarely leave the house except for taking my dog for a walk or to get out for a run. My husband and I take turns heading to the grocery store where we’re fully masked, and reek of Purell. As much as it breaks my extroverted heart to admit, I have stayed clear of others physically.

We have a little ‘bubble’ which includes my parents and my brother and his family (we’re Greek, so it’s only natural that we live within 5 kilometers of one another). My older children are away at university so we rely on FaceTime for human connection. My youngest son goes to school with my nieces, and after staying away from each other for what feels like forever, we were all growing tired and weary of our solitude and desperately wanted to get together. 

Earlier this month, we had a lovely dinner at my place which is where the sneaky virus began its wicked spread through my family. My sister-in-law was the first one to start feeling unwell; she experienced fever, chills, and body aches the day after our dinner. Two days later, my brother and husband felt the same. We collectively doubted that it was Covid as neither of them had a cough nor any breathing issues, plus we didn’t know anyone in any of our circles who was exposed or had it. My husband immediately sequestered himself to the basement as soon as he started to feel ‘off’. I would leave food on the steps for him, and he missed out on family life to protect my son and I from catching whatever he had, for almost a week. It took 2 days for him to get an appointment for the dreaded nasal swab test at the nearby Assessment Center, and another 2 days to get his positive results. The wait felt like forever.

It’s strange when you realize the same virus that has halted the entire planet is now living in your home, and inside your loved one. However, I refused to believe that I would get it. I’m strong and healthy. A life-long vegetarian who does daily yoga and runs 40km per week. I don’t get sick. I don’t even allow myself to think about getting sick. I come from a long line of ‘we-don’t-get-sick’ mentality. My dad was a pieceworker and my mom was a server, and they never missed a day of work in their entire lives due to illness. No paid sick days simply meant they couldn’t afford to get sick. 

Thus, on the sixth day of my husband’s basement sequestering, I shared good and bad news with him. The good news was he could come upstairs and take a real shower; the bad news was I had an awful headache (which I never get) and had lost my sense of smell entirely. By the end of the day, I could no longer taste and had backache that I could only compare to early labour (I’ve had three kids without drugs and this pain was just as bad). Aside from the excruciating back pain, I had intense skin tingling around my lower back, and sincere brain fog. I immediately stopped feeling like myself.

I thought I could continue to work through it, take extra strength Advil, join my virtual meetings, and convince myself that I was fine. After all, I’m a remote worker in tech, all I really need is my laptop. But this virus was non-negotiable, and my body and mind desperately needed to rest. I was taking 6-8 hot baths a day as my only solace to the back ache. I know only one other person who had Covid – a super vibrant, much-younger, workmate in California. She was ill for months and could tell even with camera off during our team meetings on zoom, that I wasn’t doing well. She encouraged me to accept that my body was fighting a virus that was literally killing others around the world and needed to rest. Her words hit home, and I took the next day off, as well as the weekend, to allow myself to surrender to my own grief, anger, frustration, and physical ailments.

My closest cousin is a big-deal doctor in one of Toronto’s downtown hospitals. When she checked in with me via text, I was busy feeling sorry for myself at home in my bath. She reminded me that most of the ICUs were filled with Covid-infected pregnant women on life support (talk about perspective).

I’ve described Covid like receiving a box of rotten chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get. My family and I are fortunate, except for only having half of my sense of smell and taste back (which is still weird and frustrating) none of my family members were ever intubated nor gasping for air.

Covid can feel like a numbers game; there’s a lot of counting that takes place. To calculate how long you’re contagious, you count 10 days from the first day you experienced symptoms. Yet many people including children, can be asymptomatic which means they’re walking, living virus carriers with no idea that they can hospitalize the cashier at Tim Horton’s simply by breathing on them. Once you’ve been exposed, you must isolate for 14 days as this is how long it can take for symptoms for this sneaky virus to appear. My little guy had symptoms popup out of nowhere 4 days after my isolation was over. Fortunately, we continued to isolate which is easy to do when your whole province has been in lockdown for what feels like forever.

We still don’t know how we got Covid or from whom. The irony is that while we spent 13 months in ultra-disinfectant, defense mode, we got Covid while many of our US colleagues are getting their second vaccine dose and living life. And while it feels like we’ve been marked with the scarlet letter (folks literally take a subconscious step backwards when I tell them I've had it), there’s also this sense of relief and freedom. We got Covid. We fought it and we’re okay.

Stay safe. Health is Wealth.

Looking forward to hugging you all in real life on the other side.