Christmas Day was nice, but then overnight Christmas night our younger daughter had a diabetic emergency and had to be rushed to the hospital, where she spent two days recovering. And then on the day after Christmas our son’s girlfriend came over for a couple hours. Monday our son texted us the bad news: she had tested positive for COVID. Turns out she came over to our house while not feeling well — she left our house that day to keep her appointment for her COVID test.
I’m glad Margaret had the talk with her about how unwise that was and how much risk she exposed us to. I was so angry that if that talk had fallen to me, I couldn’t have held back the unkind words. Margaret was a lot kinder than I would have been in telling our son and his girlfriend that they are not welcome here if they have so much as a sniffle. Be fully well or stay the hell home.
I didn’t spend any real time with the young woman while she was here. Our youngest son did, however, and he got COVID from her. Fortunately, he was double vaccinated — he had a couple bad days with it where all he could do was lie in bed, but he’s been sicker in his life. He’s almost back to normal now.
I bought a bunch of in-home COVID tests while we push through this. I was fortunate to find some still available to be shipped here from Walgreens.com — I must have got the last of them, as they’re now out of stock everywhere. Our son tested positive, of course, but the rest of us keep testing negative. Margaret and I are triple vaccinated; perhaps that’s helping us. Margaret is his direct caregiver and she’s so far avoided catching it. We’re being extra cautious — Margaret and our son are largely isolating upstairs, and I’m largely isolating downstairs, sleeping on the pull-out couch.
And then of course on New Year’s Eve, my oldest daughter was found dead in her home. So we’ve had a straight-up terrible holiday.
Because our son’s positive COVID test was done at home, it doesn’t register on the official count of cases. Have a look at the stunning post-holiday case spike Indiana is having.
News reports are saying that COVID-19 is on its way to becoming endemic — a new normal, and something we will have to live with forever. I hope that along the way, they find better vaccines and more effective treatments.
At the moment I’m out of grace for people who won’t be vaccinated, like one of our sons. I know the arguments against it. Most of them don’t hold water. The ones that have some validity are not strong enough, in my opinion, to overcome how much better off we’d all be today if more people had done it the minute it became available to them.
