For two years my family and I led a life of ultimate precaution: mask-wearing, triple vaccinations, and not going to restaurants or honestly, anywhere. Little did I know that at some point I would be living with the enemy, my brother.
Like everyone, he had gotten comfortable with not wearing a mask in outdoor public areas and during his volleyball games. On one of those occasions he ended up contracting coronavirus and bringing it home. When he began to feel unwell he thought the exhaustion and having an all-nighter were catching up, little did he know what it was.
After testing at his school, our family of four flew into a frenzy because nothing felt real at the moment. How could it be that after so many months and close deaths of family members that the virus made its way into our home?
The instant my brother got home he was secluded into my parents bedroom while my parents took over his “room:” the living room, and I stayed in my bedroom, occasionally visiting my parents who were just a door-opening away. My parents and I took at-home tests and tested negative so we decided that isolating this way and still wearing masks was best.
The next morning I woke up with a scratchy throat which I blamed on having slept with the window open. This same day my parents and I went to take a PCR test at a county site to make sure we were actually negative. The next day we got the same results: negative, except me, who was required to submit another sample. Uh-oh. However, seeing that my parents were negative, I still had very high hopes that I was too.
Nonetheless, I spent the following day sleeping all day because I felt a sinus-like pain so tremendous my vision was impaired and I had absolutely zero energy. The next morning, after taking a bite of a quesadilla I realized that I couldn’t taste anything, I couldn’t even smell it. Panicked, in the calmest way possible, my mom administered an at-home test to which I did test positive.
Tears fell down my cheeks as I took in what was happening, fear, anger and sadness hit me in the most overwhelming way possible. I mean, I had already suspected this because I had almost every single symptom in the book and had never felt so horrible in my life.
My mom ended up testing positive, but my dad did not. I still wonder how my dad managed to escape this overwhelming inferno when we all ate, talked and slept under the same roof. All I can say is that he never once took his mask off inside our house when he found out my brother had tested positive.
It’s almost three weeks later, and I still cannot believe that I’m just another number in COVID stats. But as many say, contracting the coronavirus is inevitable.
But is it really?