SteelyKid doesn’t have Covid.
This was not always a sure thing. I got a call Monday from SteelyKid at school, complaining of a headache and upset stomach and asking to be picked up from the nurse’s office. When we made the exchange, the nurse said to keep an eye out for new symptoms, and go to the doctor for a Covid test in case of fever.
We spent that afternoon at home, watching movies— SteelyKid watched all of Super 8, and bailed out of Transformers halfway through (“This is not a good movie.”)— and I was ready to write it off as just stress from the NWEA testing that was being done that morning. Then, at dinner, SteelyKid complained “I feel all shivery, but it’s not cold in here…” Sure enough, the digital thermometer clocked in at 102F.
Of course, this had waited until after the pediatrician closed for the day, and the on-call doctor took an hour to call us back (she added the suggestion to get a strep test as well, saying there was a lot of that going around). Then it was off to the urgent care for testing. Our first stop had a multi-hour backlog, but we found another place that got us in quickly by medical standards. A couple of nose swabs and a throat swab, and we were off with instructions to stay home pending the results. SteelyKid went to bed listless and feverish and unhappy
There was a real knot in my stomach all Monday night, largely because The Pip is still unvaccinatable (move your bureaucratic asses, FDA…). The rest of us all have our shots— in fact, I was lying on the couch binge-watching Squid Game when I got the call Monday, suffering side effects from the vaccine booster shot I got Sunday. I’m reasonably confident that we’re protected against serious illness, but as no end of alarmist stories keep reminding us, that’s not perfect. As a not-quite-ten-year-old, The Pip is also at fairly low risk, but fairly low is not zero.
That knot loosened a lot on Tuesday morning, when I went in to check on SteelyKid, and got a lengthy report on a dream about trying to make pancakes (I offered frozen waffles with maple syrup for breakfast instead, which was enthusiastically accepted). The fever was gone, and SteelyKid was chatty and happy for basically the whole day. Kate and I both stayed home, and we kept The Pip out of school for the day just out of an abundance of caution. SteelyKid stayed up in the bedroom for the whole day except for an excursion to get Arby’s curly fries for lunch (eaten in Kate’s car), to keep as much distance between the kids as we could reasonably manage.
The knot didn’t entirely go away, as SteelyKid complained a couple of times about food not tasting good, but that’s actually a pretty regular occurrence for us, so didn’t necessarily prove anything. We didn’t know for sure until this morning, when we finally got the negative PCR test back; when they told us it was negative, Kate’s happy yell badly startled The Pip (who was watching videos in the next room with headphones on).
I went down to the urgent care place to get the test results (they were supposed to text me a link, but I suspect they put our landline into the system in place of my cell number; the results were timestamped around lunchtime on Tuesday, grumble mutter grump), and Kate packed the kids up for school. There was a huge line at urgent care; a bunch of people needing PCR tests for travel, but also a bunch of families with kids (including one of SteelyKid’s classmates, who was coming out as I went in). I suspect that whatever mystery virus SteelyKid had that caused a fever for a few hours (it wasn’t strep) is sweeping through the school, sending a lot of families to testing centers and sleepless nights. A couple of years ago, such a 24-hour bug would’ve been just one of those things, now it’s a recipe for panic.
Both kids are back at school now, and were very happy to get there. They spent the time I was out getting the paper copy of the test results for SteelyKid to give the school nurse dressing the dog in household objects:
And, most importantly, SteelyKid doesn’t have Covid.
This is a little more personal than the usual content here, but I was in need of catharsis. Here are some buttons:
And as usual, the comments will be open.
Glad to hear he's okay.
>and bailed out of Transformers halfway through (“This is not a good movie.”)
He has better taste than I did at his age. Though if he's open to recommendations, Transformers Prime is a good show, and More Than Meets the Eye is a good comic.