I’ve been taking most of the suggested precautions regarding COVID since they were established months and months ago. I had very little time home from work through all this. I do work in an office building that has been closed off to the public since April. We haven’t been to any large gatherings or events in who-knows-how-long. And here we are, going on 4+ months of this and now I was notified that someone I was around earlier in the week just tested positive for COVID.
I personally wasn’t planning on getting tested unless I started showing symptoms. A week had gone by and I was still fine. That changed on the eighth day. Here’s my experience being tested for COVID.
I felt fine all day on Monday. My husband called me on his way home and said he developed a little cough, but thought it was nothing. Tuesday morning I woke up with a very sore throat. I woke my husband up and asked him if he was feeling okay. He said he wasn’t and he felt like he had a fever. I grabbed the thermometer and checked his temperature. It was almost 102. I told him that neither one of us would be going into work that day and I cancelled the babysitter.
My throat and other symptoms slowly got worse as the day went on. I never had a fever though. I was checking my temperature at least once daily since I found out I had been exposed to Covid the week before. By the end of the night, my husband’s fever broke, but now my symptoms expanded to include dizziness, congestion, and headaches.
Wednesday afternoon the lethargy hit me. I was reading something with our son and all of a sudden I just couldn’t keep my eyes open. I asked my husband if he was feeling well enough for me to go lay down for a bit. I ended up taking a two hour nap.
Thursday finally arrived. It was testing day. Once I arrived at my testing location (ten minutes early), I was the seventh car in line. Forty minutes later there were still four cars in front of me. Someone finally came out and explained they had delays because they were told today that they need to be doing some extra steps between appointments.
Finally, my turn came. The person walking me through the test was very kind and I honestly couldn’t imagine doing his job, especially with the backlog they were having that day. He was wearing a mask too and was a little hard to understand, but with all the paperwork, we made it work.
Now, I had to stick the swab up my nose. I thought this would be worse, because it just sounds horrible. It wasn’t painful, but it was definitely uncomfortable. I would recommend having a tissue handy after your test because my nose was a little runny after.
From when I arrived to when my testing was complete, took two hours. I was definitely not prepared to spend that long for testing, but I was thankful to get a test. Overall the experience was a good one and I can’t really complain about anything.
I chose my testing site because they advertised a 2-4 day turnaround time and everywhere else was a minimum of 5 days. After I made my appointment, I discovered that almost all of our state’s tests were going to one single lab about 5 hours away. So this made me question how valid my testing sites turnaround time was. It turns out it was accurate. I woke up Sunday morning to an email with my test results. I was negative.
Now that I received a negative result, I will be following my employer’s guidelines on when I can return to work.
If you go to a drive thru testing site like I did, here’s what I recommend:
- Make an appointment if they offer them. Some places are appointment only.
- Bring food and water, you might be stuck there for a while. Or even a good book.
- Don’t bring your kids if you can help it. I know my son would have gone crazy being stuck on the car at one place for so long.
- Don’t forget your mask. They probably won’t see you unless you have one. If you don’t have a mask, call ahead and see if a mask can be provided to you when you arrive.
Also, while you are waiting to get tested or for your test results, treat everything like you have the virus. You won’t know for sure for a while and it’s better to be safe than sorry. We even cancelled an event we had been looking forward to for months, but we did our part and stayed home.
You can follow along with Claire and all her motherhood adventures on Instagram at fromcoffeetocarrots.
