If there was a Guinness record for most COVID scares, I’m pretty sure I can be at least among the top 5 contenders. You’d think since I’ve already been through it twice I should be taking it as a piece of cake. But this time? Man, this time was serious.
A quick flashback to my second coronavirus scare:
(Watery visual effect as everything becomes blurry, a “bulululululm” sound in the background)
As we’re celebrating the fact that the plague has not entered our home, one family member states it still might be a false negative.
(Back to the present)
At first, we were all like “Egh, what are the chances?” but about a week went by and some of us were starting to show some scary symptoms. I’m talking fever, coughing, sore throat, loss of taste - the whole nine yards. The thought that the horrible pandemic, which shut down the entire planet, has made it to our doorstep after all, was starting to sink in.
We decided to all get tested. It was important we knew for sure if and who had it, so maybe at least one of us could do grocery runs (my mom would never trust online grocery delivery again). But we couldn’t get tested right away, because guess what? It was Friday.
This was our plan: The testing facility opens Monday at 8 a.m., and we expected hundreds of people to be lining up so we set our target arrival time to 7:30 at the latest. We split into as many cars as possible so whoever doesn’t have the Rona, won’t get it on the way there. My dad drew us all a map of how to get exactly to the end of the line (there are some things Google Maps just can’t provide), and we were all equipped with enough water, snacks, and entertainment to last us through a wait that could potentially go on for hours.
We woke up at 6:30, drank our coffees real quick, got all we needed for the wait, and left the house at 7 o’clock sharp. Turns out, not the entire county was waiting to get tested that Monday morning, cause I arrived to be 4th in line (my dad was 2nd, of course). After a wait that lasted 20, maybe 30 minutes, it was my turn to get the swab.
Now, I’ve heard on the news that they swab your nose, and heard from some people who already got tested that they go pretty deep in there, but no one really prepared me for what I was about to experience. The man at the testing station (let’s call him Morris, just for the fun of it) was very nice. He was all smiley and polite and at no point gave me any signs that what I was about to experience was going to haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. He inserted the swab into my left nostril, started moving it in a circular motion, and every time I thought he got what he needed, Morris just pushed it deeper. This kept going until he literally reached all the way to the back of my throat! While all this is happening, I was making suffering noises that grew louder the deeper he went. But Morris? His smile just kept getting wider and wider. He even laughed a little right before he pulled the swab, which by then felt like it reached down to my heart, back out.
When it was all over, Morris put the swab back into the testing kit and said, “That’s it, have a good one!” and kept on with his day. I felt violated. I felt like this man took my money, abused my nose, and sent me home just like that as if nothing happened. As I was driving back, I kept blowing my nose feeling like a part of the swab was still inside me. The feeling of the swab pushing through my nostril and into my throat kept popping into my head, along with the evil giggles of Morris in the background. I felt like I couldn’t escape it. Like I was going to keep getting flashbacks of this incident until I die. But then, just around the time we all called it a night, I logged into the testing facility’s website and my results were already there! They were negative.
The rest of the family all got the same results, which meant that once again, we were spared from the cursed disease. The next day, just like magic, all our symptoms just vanished into thin air. We were all happy to go back to our somewhat normal lives, and Mr. Morris and the swab of doom became nothing but a bad (but funny) memory. This time I will not end with a “To be continued” in hopes that there won’t be another scare. But you still never know 🤷♂️
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