The first half of my sickness I was hoping I didn’t have Covid-19. I was so sick–sore throat, constant fever with chills that came and went, painful body aches & joint pain, daily headaches, and a tight chest that felt like a bag of potatoes sitting on my chest–I prayed it wasn’t the coronavirus. Then, after I finally got tested and subsequently started feeling better, I, instead, started hoping that it was, in fact, the coronavirus I had caught, or, rather, had caught me. 

Although I didn’t have much of a cough, several days into my illness I called a drive-thru clinic to see if I could get tested. My husband drove me to the tent set-up in a nearby city where I waited a few minutes before a nurse practitioner walked over to my car. She asked me my symptoms and checked my vitals. My fever was 103.3, everything else normal. She said she was first going to test for flu because I wasn’t showing all the typical symptoms of Covid-19. 

The flu test was uncomfortable enough but once that came back negative, I realized the real treat would be the coronavirus test. Similar to the flu test, the covid-19 test consisted of inserting a large q-tip-like instrument into each nostril. Because of the high rate of false negatives (up to 40%), the “q-tip” had to be held in each nostril for at least 10 seconds, and then turned ’round in circles in order to collect as much “virus” as possible. 

This was painful. It felt as if something was clawing the back of my brain. Before you experience this kind of horror, you don’t even realize your nose goes that far back. It’s an impossibly deep cave and all you want to do is pull away and run. Once the test had been performed, I was given a tissue and told I had to quarantine until my results were ready. 

The next few days I slowly started getting better. I would wake up and feel like I wasn’t going to die. I could go a whole day without unbearable body aches. I was strong enough to finally brave our staircase. As my body got stronger, I started hoping that what I had truly was the coronavirus. That after that long battle, I didn’t have to worry anymore. We could do normal things again. We didn’t have to wear masks everywhere, or sanitize our groceries, or live in constant fear of catching a deadly virus no one knows anything about. 

Getting the results took ages. An entire five days, which I’m now learning is relatively short compared to most of the country right now. A male nurse practitioner called me on that fifth day after my original testing and told me “congratulations, you’re negative for coronavirus.” I should have been happy, but I was instantly afraid.

In all, I had a fever for 9 days straight. I would wake up at night drenched in sweat, yet shivering cold. I hurt all over for more than a week. My body fought through something bad. I was hoping that thing was the coronavirus. I’m grateful I’m alive, but I’m also scared again.