Hello, World. After 3 years of successfully evading Covid, I have been caught. I give up my Covid Virgin status reluctantly. I was aiming to be the Last Covid-free Person on Earth and I now belong to the masses.
I am lucky, I know. I have not been all that sick and I suffer confinement in a lovely rooftop room in Mexico where the temperature, if anything, can be a tad too hot. I hear birds, barking dogs, the occasional rooster. The Wi-Fi is good and I have my computer.
As a writer, isolation suits me — no?
Yes, and no. I’ve discovered that there is a difference between voluntary isolation for creative purposes and the isolation that comes of being The Leper in the Attic.
This is Day 8 since I first tested, and the lines on the daily Rapid Test have been getting fainter and fainter. I’m told that this is a good sign. Will today be the day I test negative? I’m not a religious person, but hope can be reverent in its longing.
I put on my reading glasses to read the fine-print instructions, for this is a new box, my third “product,” and every make is slightly different. My first, the rapid tests given out in Ontario, Canada, were hard on the nose, insisting on deep entry of the dreaded swab. My second, generously given to me by the artist whose room I’m renting, were a US product, which specified that there was no need for deep penetration. (Say hey!) Now I have a third, manufactured in China but sold in Mexico, and the instructions are tiny and in Spanish. It’s a language I failed in High School, and now, over a half-centry later at the august age of 78, I can only sort of muddle through. Especially the new (to me) vocabulary on a Chinese Rapid Covid Test sold in Mexico.
Fortunately, there is an illustration, which, unfortunately, demonstrates a deep entry of the dreaded swab, called tampón, which evokes images of another stage of life, a stage long past me. There are no specifications for how long the tampón is to be inserted, whether in one nostril or two, or how many times it is to be twirled.
But I am, by this Day 8, well trained in both Canadian and US methods, and proceed, twirling, counting the 15 seconds in each nostril — or, rather, twirling until a violent, teary sneeze forces ejection. I sit the tampón in the tube (a nicely made one, I note, with an attached top), squeeze, twirl, repeat, wait a bit, and then ready myself reverently for The Moment.
On the 3rd drop into the muestra del dispositivo (Google translate: device sample), I see the dreaded red stain rising. I don’t have to wait the 10 to 20 minutes to understand the verdict. Indeed, it is instantly clear: I have covid. Still.
And the two lines on the muestra del dispositivo are not the least bit faint.
"There's a reason those Rapid Antigen Tests are called RATS."
I've been wondering what RATS stood for! :-)
I've also been a Leper in the Attic, and sympathize with you. Watching that rising stain approach the dreaded thin red line is heart-stopping. There's a reason those Rapid Antigen Tests are called RATS.