So I woke up on a Thursday with what felt like a baseball in my throat. Through the day, I felt continuously weak and worse. Friday, still not feeling great and knowing my daughter and her family were coming, I did a COVID test. If I had it, I wanted to stop them from coming, but it was negative.
It wasn’t a whole lot better through the weekend. On Sunday, we were to go visit my parents. With past experience of testing negative for COVID one day then positive the next, I did another test so as not to possibly bring COVID to them. Again, negative.
Monday it had devolved into a deep, painful, frequent cough. I decided to go visit an urgent care facility. Remembering what happened last February when I went downstate to babysit my son’s daughters while he and his wife went out West skiing for a week, I figured I should do another test. Because that time, about exactly when their plane landed in California, I started feeling lousy. I didn’t test for COVID. I had done that other times, and it was always negative. I didn’t even consider it could be COVID.
So I took the girls to my daughter and went to urgent care only to have them insist on a COVID test because I hadn’t already done one myself. Bingo. It was COVID. With their two parents across the country, I felt like the worst, most-failed grandma ever. I wore a mask 24/7, couldn’t take them anywhere and was dragging the whole time.
It was with that experience in mind that I did yet another COViD test before I went to urgent care this time, thinking they would chide me if I didn’t. It was negative.
So I got there and being the good soldier that I am, told the registration clerk that I had already tested negative for COVID that day as I had two other times in the previous four days. She looked at me like I had two heads.
“That’s a little excessive, isn’t it?” she asked. “I would never do that.” She went on to say something to the effect of even if she was forced, she wouldn’t take a COVID test.
I stammered, explaining I was trying to avoid infecting my family over the weekend, and that I thought that day, her medical professionals would have wanted me to test before coming. “Some might,” she said, her voice trailing off, dripping with skepticism. I just kept my mouth shut after that.
The medical person I dealt with next was a breath of fresh air. There was none of the judgment I’d just experienced — only assistance and kindness.
But that initial encounter was the last thing I would have expected in a health care facility. How did swabbing my nose a couple times harm me or anyone else, anyway? I know it’s just been classified as endemic, but COVID at its peak was intense. Old habits die hard. It’s still around, and was still concerned about needlessly spreading it. For that I had to defend myself?
It’s one thing for a doctor or P.A. relying on science and experience to give you their reasoned opinion. But is it appropriate for the person at check-in to take a stand like that as you walk in the door?