Virus Diary #1

Media (at least in my country Norway) has been full of stories about the pandemic. The focus has been on the serious cases, the horror stories from hospital units where unlucky patients fight for their lives with severely damaged lungs.

I got a mild case of COVID. Maybe reading one of these blog posts will make someone recognise the signs of the infection, and decide to get tested. If only one person does that, then these posts will have served their purpose. I know that the infection is different from person to person; as a Reddit user put it, "Breakthrough COVID is a disease with random symptoms".

I'm vaccinated. My country has had a good supply of vaccines, and I'm in the age group that didn't come completely last in the queue. Unfortunately, the virus caught up with me before the second shot did.

Day 1

I picked our son up from the nursery at 3 in the afternoon. He was tired after playing outside, and he had completely refused to take his thick jacket off in the warm late summer day. When I arrived, he was sitting in the kitchen eating a snack. This must have been the first time he would rather be inside than outside. I asked the employee if she thought he was getting sick. She assured me that it was completely normal for the newcomers to get tired easily, their senses can be overloaded from the new situation with other kids everywhere.

I was also feeling tired and cold. My SO had been feeling unwell for a couple of days and didn't want to go to the nursery in case he had an infectious cold or something. When the little one just wanted to spend the rest of the day curled up on my lap, we decided to measure his temperature. We all had a low fever.

Now I had to contact the nursery and tell them that the little one wasn't coming in tomorrow, as well as my boss. She told me to stay away from work for as long as I have a fever. I asked if I could still come in and do something that didn't directly involve customers, but that was also not allowed.

Still hoping that I'd get up for work at 5.30 the next morning to go to work, I went to sleep on the sofa, to not disturb the others that early in the morning...