Hi guys, today I just wanted to update you on our Covid-19 experience and let you know what’s been happening since my husband tested positive. You can read our original story HERE.

Once my husband tested positive for Covid-19 and we finished our quarantine, in which we couldn’t leave our house (not even to pull the trash can to the street), my husband reached out to our local health department and tried to get another test to confirm that the virus was, in fact, out of his system and he couldn’t infect any others when he went back to work. However, he was told another test would not be possible.

I believe over the course of a week he asked five or six times how he could get a second test before he went back to work. Not only did he want to test negative for his own peace of mind, but his employer also asked for it. And if you remember, his case was unusual (or maybe not so unusual) in that he tested positive without ever showing any symptoms.

The health department stated in their reasoning for denying my husband a second test that their protocol for Covid-19 testing and quarantine was that an infected person was required to quarantine in their home for 14 days after receiving a positive test and until their symptoms were gone. But what about those who never show symptoms? What about those still testing positive months after their original positive result?

There is no protocol for “carriers” or those presumed to carry and spread the disease without showing symptoms themselves. How would we know he wasn’t continuing to spread the disease without a negative test confirming the virus was gone?

These were our questions but we got no answers. The health department said that as long as my husband wasn’t showing symptoms, they had no reason to give him another test. Which, to me, sounds ridiculous as he had never showed any symptoms in the first place and was only tested because I was very sick.

Alas, my husband went back to work without getting an official “all clear”–a negative test. He did receive a piece of paper stating he didn’t have any symptoms and had been through the required 14-day quarantine, but we all knew that already.

Since recovering from Covid-19 no one in my family has ever had any more symptoms, including myself. However, I do still have lumps under my left arm–supposedly swollen lymph nodes–that I’m hoping will disappear soon. If not, I’m going to have to go back to my doctor and get checked out again.

For now, I’m not watching the news anymore. I’m in a weird place between…maybe feeling a little survivor’s guilt (?), and feeling overly confident in myself and my body’s ability to fight something as deadly as Covid-19. My feelings are kind of all over the place and I really don’t know how I’m supposed to feel.

Life for me is mostly back to normal, besides having to homeschool my kids, of course, which is still a nightmare, but almost over. Other than that, I’m really a homebody anyway and don’t go out a whole lot. I’m a stay-at-home-mom and I work from home, too, so I already spend a lot of time at home and the “social distancing” aspect of the virus fallout has not really affected me too much.

My husband is back to work and things feel like they used to. We are regularly going fishing and hiking (away from other people), I’m working on furniture and home projects again, and we’re trying to live life as normally as possible. In a weird way I’m relieved that I got the virus when I did and that my family was able to get through it fairly easily compared to so many others. But I also don’t want to minimize anyone else’s pain and suffering.

Because scientifically my family should have some kind of immunity against the virus for at least the near future–hopefully until a vaccine becomes available–I’m not as fearful as I once was. I still wear a mask when I go out and try to be careful around others, but I’m not up at night full of anxiety about catching the virus or worrying about my family and what might happen to them if they get sick. Like I said, maybe I feel overly confident, but I think that’s only because of my own personal experience with the virus.