Getting a notice on your door from the City informing you that your area is now deemed a Covid-19 hot spot is a lot like being told, oh by the way, your house is located on ground zero.
“We’re going to test you and let you know if your house is on fire.” Okay.
I make light of this, only because, it was pretty terrifying.
Testing is strictly voluntary, but it is the right thing to do, and we all know it. This way we can know what the demographics are, and do contact tracing. We are so fortunate to live in a country that is making every effort to arrest the spread of this disease. It is an uphill battle as people get tired of the whole affair. Especially the young, which is where the increase of infections are happening now.
And so they came and tested all of us, in our parking lot, one beautiful summer weekend. We stood outside in a long line, six feet apart, with our masks on, waiting our turn and trying very, very hard to pretend none of us is worried. At least I got to see some fellow tenants I haven’t seen in ages, that were once regular fixtures in my day to day life. But we didn’t talk, just nodded our recognition of each other, and kept our thoughts to ourselves.
The mobile testing unit was extremely well organized. The staff were so professional, courteous and talkative, well, when you haven’t had much human contact in a long while this was almost a pleasant outing. These are strange times.
The test itself is slightly uncomfortable, but the person doing it took their time and were so reassuring. I commend them for their patience. I’m not a youngster anymore and it takes me a while to accept a swab up my nose and in my throat. But hey, at my age, I have had way more invasive tests than this, that lasted forever and have traumatized me for life. So if you want the test, be assured, this is nothing.
No word is a good word, that is, if you don’t hear from the Public Health Nurse the next day, you are okay. But I checked my results anyways on-line and I am negative. Which, strangely, is not all that reassuring.
If you are negative, then you are still extremely vulnerable to getting Covid-19. And now I am a hundred times more afraid to go out.
If you’re positive, then it is like sitting on a time bomb, wondering when it will go off. Listening to it ticking each day. And then you fear, have I given this thing to someone else, someone I love?
All this just added to the ambiguity of my life at the moment and kind of makes everything that has happened since that fateful day in March, when they told us to close our office and go home, surreal.
