There was a sense of inevitability about the latest strain of COVID doing the rounds, in that everyone was going to get it at some stage.
My turn happened to be this morning.
I can’t say I didn’t see it coming though, as soon as it made its way into the house it was more a matter of when, not if, I could pick it up.
I lasted four days.
The funny thing is, in taking what’s become a daily test, I knew the outcome of this one would be different.
The coughing started last night, but then I’ve been coughing for years. Muscle ache followed and two poor nights of sleep capped it off.
As most will attest to, the second line on the antigen test didn’t need 15 minutes to materialise, instead deciding to show its face before I’d even jumped in the shower.
Since it landed in the house, everything had been distanced, masked, cleaned and the rest but even with all the windows open there’s still no getting away from it.
“There’s no getting away from it this time”, they said, as case numbers continued to rocket with the lifting of restrictions in early spring. I laughed. They laughed. In the end, they were right.
Cracking (up) on
Now, it’s more about getting through it, getting over the annoyance of having it and needing to spend a few days indoors, and getting on.
Even in a world now built on remote working, I’ve been in the office pretty much every day since the pandemic began, barring the occasional split of days to nurse a crèche absence so being housebound is a new thing.
It’s gas when you think about it given I’ve colleagues who haven’t worked a day in the office in two years and friends who will likely never step foot back in their respective offices given the changes in workplace environments.
But at least I have that luxury, to work from home.
What I don’t need is the shortness of breath, the gnarly cough that feels like you’re forever trying to drag something up from the dead, or the weird aches in joints that were never there before.
But we’ll get over that, right?
Right?
