COVID-19 Motherhood Diary, Entry 30: COVID is Back

By Melissa Menny

My family and I took a weekend road trip to Dallas at the start of spring break. The idea was to unwind and visit family members we hadn’t seen in a while. While having some downtime to spare, we thought visiting the city’s aquarium was a good idea. With every move we make, I find myself praying, hoping, and wishing that we don’t get COVID-19 again.

Unfortunately, the sign of the cross didn’t shield us from it this time. After avoiding it for over a year and a half, I tested positive for the virus again.

To backtrack and paint the scene, my family and I went to the aquarium on Saturday afternoon. We saw some people parking their cars and walking to the building. When we approached the facility entrance, there was a crowd of people waiting in a maze to get in. Common sense should have kicked in, and we should have left. Instead, we talked ourselves into believing that the line would thin out quickly and everyone would disperse once they were inside. We were wrong. There was no relief once we were inside, and no workers around to point us to the exit. Once inside, we found ourselves feet to feet, scooting in a crowd, just trying to get out. There was nowhere to maneuver. It was a fire hazard. We were breath to neck and at the mercy of everyone else’s speed or lack thereof.

When we finally got out of the maze, we were relieved and upset. Never mind the money and time we wasted just scooting around waiting to squeeze our way out. I was personally upset about my poor judgment of the situation. Although I prayed for a miracle, I knew the possibility of getting sick was high. How could we not, in a scenario where hundreds of people were sharing the space without a mask in sight? Of course, I can’t say for certain that the particular outing was our doom, but I know the road trip for sure was.

By the end of the day, my four-year-old had vomited following a tantrum, which gave me pause. For a second, I thought I was overthinking or being paranoid. When he went to sleep, he had the chills and was coughing. Because he has been ill so much since starting school, COVID was, unfortunately, the furthest thing from my mind. We gave him some medicine and observed him like we normally do. He was okay. It wasn’t until we returned home that things became clearer.

I woke up Monday morning feeling optimistic that we had avoided the worst-case scenario. However, things started to take a turn as the day progressed. I became congested and slightly lethargic. Both of our boys were sick, but their symptoms were mild and manageable. As for me, by the end of the day, I told my husband I would take a test. What I had begun to feel was eerily familiar, and I needed to know for sure. After a long fifteen-and-a-half-minute wait, the test was positive. I dragged my aching body with tissue stuffed in my nose to the next room and showed my husband the test. I was furious. It was what I had been dreading for months. We officially went into lockdown mode for the next few days.

My husband felt the better of us, so he cared for most of our needs. Even though our kids were sick with meds, they were being themselves, busy and playful. Because of that, I couldn’t just lay in bed all day. For four days, my entire body was in pain, and I had major vertigo. Every step I took was met with dizziness. Then there were the usual cold symptoms, which meant carrying around tissue in bulk. The entire week, I was struggling to breathe, waking up soaked in sweat, with aching muscles all over. Fortunately, I was spared from having a fever this time. That was the only illusion of a silver lining that I could pull from a bad situation.

Catching COVID again really made me feel stupid. I had no immediate eloquent thought. All I could think about and all I could feel was stupidity. This notion that I could actually avoid getting the virus just doesn’t hold up anymore. I had been existing and moving on prayers and hope. The reality is no matter how much sanitizer we use or how often we wear or don’t wear our masks, we never know if our children are taking the virus home with us or not. Whenever we would do something outside of our home, I would pray and then say thank you when we survived another outing without getting sick. I’ve been living my life on pins, needles, and a thread, and it finally broke.

Melissa Menny is an author with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism. She is a poet and a writer in all aspects. When she is not working, she enjoys painting, music, and spending time with her husband and two sons.

This is the most recent in a series of essays about raising young children in the COVID era. Read entry 29 here.