The Baranko Family: COVID-19

With the colder weather and everything moving indoors, the COVID rates spiked again and IL moved back to an earlier mitigation phase. This meant that I went back to working from home full-time.

Unfortunately, though, this is the week that I got sick and (many days later) learned that I had tested positive for COVID. Thankfully, my case was mild with cold-like symptoms of a sore throat and congestion. It felt like any other cold I've ever had, and I get colds frequently. Also VERY thankfully, I didn't infect anyone. You can bet I was crazy worried that I had just been with my parents the weekend before, while I would have been contagious. My worst covid nightmare! I don't know if it was because of the mask wearing or maybe I wasn't contagious yet (or maybe I didn't really have it!) but thank God neither of parents got the virus (nor my Aunt Susan, who I stopped by to drop some things off to and chatted for a while, also with mask-on).

Even as I write this I feel confused about the situation. What happened was that Luke had a sore throat on Sunday. The next day he felt better already, but just in case Matt took him to the doctor and he got a rapid covid test, which was negative. On Tuesday night I started getting a sore throat, and assumed I had whatever Luke had (which wasn't covid). On Wednesday I got a PCR covid test, though, just to be sure (because I'm a crazy covid person who has had anxiety all year over covid). I didn't isolate. All four of us lived together as normal the whole week. I worked from home like normal, despite my cold symptoms. Then on Saturday night I received my result that I was positive (!!). By this time my symptoms were almost totally improved and I was already almost on day 6 of my 10 day quarantine. We decided that I would not isolate, as everyone had already been exposed all week. Matt got a PCR test on Sunday, and learned on Tuesday that it was negative! He got another test a week later to end his quarantine a few days early, and that was also negative. So presumably nobody but me had COVID. I finished my 10 day quarantine, and then Matt and the kids had to start their 2 week quarantine. So it was a long time to not be able to leave the house!

In case you're wondering, I don't know where I caught COVID. With the back dating, it could have been from work somehow (although I just sit in my office alone all day) or at the museum (even though I wore a mask and we social distanced the whole time). Anyway, that was what I did about 5 days before symptoms started. We will never know! To make things even more unclear, I got an antibody test in late December and I tested negative for antibodies. Even though I'm ok now, with all the unknowns about long-term problems, there is a big part of me that is wishing it was a false-positive and I never had it. I'm holding out my sliver of hope, you can't stop me!

Anyway, here are some pics of the week that I had covid (maybe) and didn't even know it for most of it.