So after a few years of pandemic and all attendant precaution, I let my guard down in a predictable way with predictable results. My office had their holiday party on the 15th, and I attended without a mask, including a tightly-packed after party where everybody had to yell to be heard. And yesterday on the 23rd I tested positive for COVID. My family was planning to visit my mom and grandmother today for Christmas Eve (this, before the extreme cold front knocked out their power for most of the day, threatening those plans anyway), and I wanted to be careful; my grandma is in her 80s, and my mom has had some chronic respiratory issues. So I took a test - the first one of many prior tests to clearly indicate a positive result.
I’m pretty lucky. I’ve had every vaccination and booster I could including more recent bivalent booster. I believe this is a major contributing factor to the mildness of my case. My symptoms feel more like an upper nasal sort of cold with a bit of sinus pressure, clear runny nose, and very faint headache. No fever whatsoever. I can still taste and smell everything just fine.
HOWEVER.
Because my nuclear family has generally been (and generally remains) pretty careful about COVID, I’m now isolating in my room through Tuesday. That means I’ve been up here all day today on Christmas Eve. That means tonight I’ll be crying at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life all alone, watching it on my iPad, sitting in my bed. That means tomorrow I’ll be watching my kids unwrap their gifts on Christmas morning via FaceTime call with my wife downstairs.
I know how I got here, and I know my own part in it. But it still sucks.