Level Ground, 9. A Swab Experience.

It's been a long time since I've been sick. I would have preferred to pass the pandemic without getting a stick up my nose, but I might just get one.

This morning I woke up fine, but at mid-morning I started to notice how my legs hurt. After a while the muscular aches went to my lower back. I then started to get chills, though the day is not exactly cold, and I am wearing an undervest with a warm polar fleece over it. I checked and I didn't have a fever. A little while later I checked again, since the shivering wasn't going away, and I had just a tenth of a degree over 37.

I've had this before, and it's always proven to be a simple spring cold, more than not, caused by temperature changes and exposure. And these days we've had a rollercoaster, along with my walking yesterday morning that got me hot and made me peel sleeves, in a stiff northeasterly wind. But my daughter started pestering me to call the doctor and forego any classes today. In ordinary times, I would have guffawed and faced a tired afternoon, but not now.

Now, I am waiting for the doctor to call me later this afternoon. Most likely, since I have no other symptom, she will say to wait till tomorrow, and if I feel better, to continue life as normal. Though, to be on the cautious side, since I am asthmatic and hypertensive, she might order a PCR for me, to be taken at the hospital in Ribeira, with its consequent wait of 24 hours for the result. I am not scared at this point. The worst moment to catch Covid was last year. Now, after all the testing, and trial and error treatments doctors have gone through in these months, they have found some weapons that truly help them. The death rate has gone down, mostly due to vaccination of the most vulnerable elderly, which shows that the majority of younger people who do get Covid won't die. It's still not something to be taken lightly, because it can leave secondary effects that last for months, if not for years, but a light is beginning to show.

Later.

The doctor called me back just before eleven. It seems there was a rush at the clinic this afternoon, because afternoon hours end at nine. I explained my symptoms, and she told me to come into the clinic and get a PCR, just to be sure. They have the capacity to do a few there, now, instead of waiting for tomorrow at the local hospital.  So, I drove along empty roads to the clinic and parked in front of the door as she told me. The attendant nurse asked what the problem was, and I told him I had been told to go for a PCR. I waited in my car as a doctor came from the back of the clinic, putting on her PPE, and getting everything together at a table by the door.

Then, she came out with the swab. The twisting, turning, and prying of the swab practically reached the back of my throat. When I started coughing and gagging, she took it back out and went inside with it. Dear God. I grabbed a tissue I had gotten ready and pressed it to my eyes and nose. There must be a better, simpler, less invasive way to get the necessary cells. 

I waited while she put it in a reactive agent of some kind on the table, and waited. At one point, while she was looking at it, she checked a booklet. Then, she took off her face guard and PPE, hanging the last over the back of a gurney in the hallway as she went back into the bowels of the clinic. Less than a minute later she came out with the night-shift doctor, who came to my car. She asked my symptoms again, and reassured me that the PCR was negative, and that I had done well to check for the worst. She told me to take a paracetamol before going to bed, and that was that. 

Thank God it was negative, if only to avoid getting another swab down my throat!

Life continues. Covid free.