On July 12, Kid 2, whom some of you know as “Brandi,” sent a video of herself squirting hot sauce into her mouth followed by “Look at this, I can’t taste or smell anything.” This has never happened before in her entire life, not with colds, not with flu, not with any infection she’s ever had. And that’s how we knew it was COVID.
It’s day 13 now, and she reports that she is feeling much better.
Between July 12 and today, there were several days of extreme fatigue. This is an active 22 year old who does 200 sit-ups a day. Walking across the house to the bathroom was a huge effort. She vomited for 3 days straight, which was followed by 3 days of upset stomach. Her throat hurt. Her chest hurt from throwing up. She slept 16 hours a day. At some point her boyfriend became concerned because as soon as she woke up, she would go back to sleep. She texted me and said things like, “I’m really, really sick, Mom.”
When my kids get sick, they come home. There is an established procedure. They are assigned a couch with a blanket and a pillow and possibly a bucket, so they don’t have to run to the bathroom. They get a ginger ale and saltines, they are given medicine, and their favorite TV show is put on TV, something that they have seen a 100 times, like the Office. I make chicken soup from scratch. They are allowed to whine, and cry, and be sad, and do all the things I couldn’t do at their age because I couldn’t go home to my mom and be babied.
I could do none of that with COVID. All I could do was sent her Pedialyte freezer pops from Amazon and have snacks delivered. It was the most helpless feeling. Our family doctor basically told us to just wait it out, so we all sat around and waited for the next temperature and oxymeter report. My dad called every other day. Gordon’s extended family freaked out over Facebook updates. At some point she texted us that she accidentally bit into the wrong snack and tasted jalapeno, and we all let out some of the breath we’ve been holding. This is what a mild case of COVID was like. We are immensely grateful that it wasn’t worse.
We are sharing this with you, because some of you are in your twenties and some of you have children or grandchildren in their twenties. This virus is hell. It hell if you get it and it’s hell on your family. Trust me, you don’t want this.
So, we are still a little bit reeling from all this as a family. We are going to take the weekend and on Monday we will update the site with the promotional schedule for EMERALD BLAZE release. We have a bunch of virtual events coming up and we will try to resume a more regular blogging schedule.
I am locking comments on this post. We know a lot of you would like to offer sympathy and we deeply appreciate it, but we have to ask you to please not email us. 🙂 We have a backlog of tasks we are now trying to get through and we are emotionally drained. We know you care and we appreciate you more than we can express.
Also, please don’t email us instructing us on quarantine procedures, etc, etc. Just assume that we are responsible adults and we by now have learned all there is a layman can learn about COVID. If you have an irresistible urge to email, use it for good and check on your family. Call your parents, call your friends, your kids, and your loved ones. Remind them that masks are good and hand washing never hurt anyone. 🙂
Take care of yourselves. We want you to stick around.
