It has been a strange week in the Jackson-Hollis household. Just about a week ago, Kelsey turned to me and said "I feel a bit strange". He was, in fact, swaying slightly. That evening, I made a bolognaise, and blamed the fact that the mince was out of the freezer for the fact that we both agreed the meal tasted like cardboard. The next morning, I woke up to a complete fog of fatigue, which reminded me of nothing so much as the first trimester of pregnancy. (And before you ask, please note we have spent the last however-many weeks of lockdown in the company of an energetic 11-month old who cackles maniacally if we so much as hug one another).
We shrugged at each other and agreed we'd better self-isolate. We live in a small village with a significant elderly population, many of whom we're very fond of - we didn't want to be unwittingly responsible for spreading 'The Plague', as Kelsey insists on calling it, around our beloved home. It was the day before our usual shopping day, but fortunately said small village is pretty well-equipped for self-isolating: all of the small, independent shops (greengrocer, butcher, and wholefood shop) do home deliveries. So we stocked up on fruit, veg, chopped tomatoes, and fancy icecream and hunkered down.
I have no idea whether it was COVID-19. Regardless, it was thoroughly strange. Kelsey had body aches, first all over and then condensing down into a drilling lower back pain. I mostly felt completely and utterly exhausted for no apparent reason, and very dizzy. Every now and then I would start coughing, continue doing so for half an hour or so, and then would just stop. The energetic 11-month old had a triple-nap day, months after dropping down to two naps. At no point did I feel like death warmed up, and I'd take the symptoms I did have over norovirus, normal flu, or hand foot and mouth disease (all of which I've had the pleasure of over the past year) any day. But it has been, and continues to be - still coughing, still knackered - one of the weirdest illnesses I've had.
I spent a lot of time during the past week of self-isolation feeling anxious about what people out there were thinking. The village grapevine has apparently been quite unaffected by social isolation, and we received anxious phonecalls, emails, and WhatsApp messages from various neighbours. I felt bizarrely guilty for causing so much worry. I felt conflicted about the fact that the headline going round was 'Dawn and Kelsey have coronavirus' when we didn't know for sure. What if we'd just had some other weird illness, and then caught the real thing in later weeks? Wouldn't people just think we were drama llamas, the couple who cried COVID-19? I spent a lot of time reading articles about the array of symptoms reported beyond the 'cough and fever' highlighted on government websites.
Ironically, it was only yesterday, a week after our bland bolognaise, that new advice was released to the effect that people should look out for loss of taste as an early symptom. It was also only yesterday that testing was opened up to the general public... with the caveat that you should get tested within no more than five days of first exhibiting symptoms. There are also no home tests available, and the nearest testing centre to us is an hour and a half round trip. On the one hand, getting tested could add to the sum of knowledge about coronavirus. On the other, travelling to get tested would probably see us doing more to spread our maybe-virus (getting petrol, potentially having to stop and get out if the wee one started crying, interacting with people at the testing centre) than anything else. So we'll probably never know for sure whether we had it.
Speaking of spreading, today saw us hit the magical 7-day moment when, according to UK government advice, we are safe to leave our home again. However, we've reluctantly decided to stay in for a further 7 days, since there seems to be research out there suggesting that you can be infectious for longer than that convenient week. Maybe we're no longer infectious, maybe we never had coronavirus, but maybe we did and maybe we still are. I'd much rather take the risk of being wrong and staying in self-isolation unecessarily than the alternative.
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