Momservation: There is always something to be learned from God’s grace shining on you.
♥ ♥ ♥
We told him it was safer to stay in Boise when he wanted to come visit us during his spring break in late March.
“They just shut down California,” my husband told our 20 year-old son. “You’d go crazy here having to shelter in place. Might as well stay there where there are only a few cases of coronavirus.”
But my son couldn’t stay home and do nothing after having to cancel what was supposed to be an epic spring break in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Instead, Logan and his girlfriend, Hailey, went to her family’s 22-acre ranch just outside of Portland, Oregon.
On their way back home on March 26 his roommates called to suggest that Logan and Hailey quarantine for 14 days at Hailey’s house since they left the state. Logan thought it was overkill since both Oregon and Idaho still only had a handful of cases and they never left the ranch, but he agreed.
The college kids still weren’t very good at social distancing; thinking having just a few friends over to play dye or video games instead of a backyard party for 50 was keeping them safe.
Nope.
Turns out the house they chose to quarantine in already had “The Rona” (as the kids call it) in it when they got home. Hailey’s roommate had a few friends over the night before they got back who turned out to be asymptomatic carriers of Covid-19.
And by asymptomatic I mean: these college kids, my son included, walk around with sniffley noses and congested voices sounding and looking like crap all the time, but it’s normally just because they live like vampires and drink like sailors on leave nearly every night. They think it’s normal to always feel like a cold is coming on.
On April 1 we got the call from my son.
“Hailey just called me at work and said I had to come straight home because her roommate just tested positive for Covid-19,” he said sounding stunned.
“This better not be an April Fool’s joke,” my husband and I said in unison.
“Because that shit ain’t funny,” my husband added.
“I wouldn’t joke about this,” Logan said sounding surprisingly unnerved for a kid who does gainers off 60-foot cliffs.
He continued to say he and Hailey and the other roommates felt fine, but the roommate who tested positive had gone to the doctor three days earlier because she thought she had a bad sinus infection. Her positive results just came back.
We discussed the protocol for living with someone who is positive for coronavirus, explaining how important it was for her to try to stay isolated and not share her bathroom.
But there was anxiety in the air (likely along with The Rona) because we all knew it would be difficult to not pick up the virus with all of them in the small 3-bedroom townhouse.
And news reports were clearly showing that perfectly healthy, young people could also die from Covid-19—seemingly at random.
“Be diligent about disinfecting. Take your temperature frequently. Call us if you need anything. We love you,” we told him as we hung up the phone 500 miles away.
“We will. Love you guys too,” our son said.
Suddenly, safe, little, college-town Boise felt so far away and scary. As parents, it felt awful to hang up the phone and have to just hope and pray for the best outcome for these kids.
And Logan and Hailey couldn’t just hope they didn’t have it. They immediately drove themselves to a drive-thru testing spot. They wouldn’t have the results for 7-10 days.
On April 3 my son texted:
I’m feeling very good today. The best in the last few days.
What? He never told us he wasn’t feeling well. We immediately called and grilled him.
“Well, we all just kind of felt like it was a sinus thing. Sore throat, headache, a little fatigued. But we never had fevers and never felt bad enough to be laid up in bed. Oh, and we can’t smell anything.”
We all agreed they likely had the virus but, luckily, might be escaping with mild symptoms.
“It’s probably a good thing my roommates made me quarantine here,” he conceded, knowing he would normally have been going back and forth between his and Hailey’s houses.
“For sure,” I said. “There would have been two houses full of The Rona and that would have been dangerous for your roommate with asthma.”
There was relief that everyone in their quarantined house seemed to be on the mend, but now cases among Boise students were popping up everywhere.
On Wednesday, April 8 Logan called with the official news: He and Hailey both tested positive for Covid-19.
“But the doctor said since we’ve been quarantining since March 26 and we haven’t had symptoms for over 72 hours, we can resume normal schedules this Friday,” Logan reported and we all finally breathed a sigh of relief. “My work said they’ll put me back on the schedule next week.”
“Well, you are kind of a superhero now,” I joked, feeling good to laugh with my son instead of being filled with dread and worry. “You have Rona antibodies!”
So in the end, besides the guilt of sending our son and his girlfriend into Rona-Central instead of letting him come visit, there is a sense of relief that when this plague came knocking on the door for our first-born son…he got passed-over.
#QuarantineStillWorks #SocialDistanceCorrectly #TestTraceIsolateReopen