With Susie being immune compromised, we’ve been careful as to what we do. Over the last two years we had not flown to visit friends or family, but we have had friends/ family come stay with us. Our youngest also has been working for quite a while at one of the local hospitals as a phlebotomist, and interacted with COVID patients. We thought we might have caught one of the Omicron sub-variants earlier this year, but neither of us tested positive. Nevertheless, we had discussions with Susie’s GP and endocrinologist about what to do if/ when testing positive.
Well we went on a trip to Washington to pick up our youngest’s college things to transport them to Minneapolis, for transferring to the University of Minnesota. The time in Washington was magical, mostly on the Olympic Peninsula. Our road trip across Washington, Idaho, Montana and South Dakota was too short, but we needed to get kids moved in over Labor Day weekend. Our eldest and his girlfriend also joined us for the long weekend.
We were scheduled to fly back on the Wednesday after Labor Day. I started to feel a bit under the weather Tuesday night, so took a Rapid Antigen COVID At Home Test. The test was positive, so we rescheduled our flight home and extended our rental. Susie tested positive three days later. Our experience was quite different from each other. I would summarize them as follows:
- My experience was a fever of around 101.7 for three days, followed by congestion and testing negative seven days after onset. I still have a persistent cough, even a week after testing negative.
- Susie’s fever was around 100.5 for about a day, no congestion but she is still testing positive over 10 days after onset. Her positive line is light purple, as opposed to dark magenta for the first five days.
One other dimension to Susie’s COVID experience is her ability to speak and understand is hampered more than her normal aphasia. We’ve experienced this in the past with other illnesses, so it’s more a wait and see situation. We were hoping to attend her Aunt Leona’s funeral, which happened this last weekend. I also had planned for us to travel to New England for Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur, and have now cancelled our trip.
So I guess it is true, life is what happens when we are busy making other plans.
PS: I received questions if Susie was prescribed Paxlovid. When she tested positive for COVID, we did a tele-health consult to discuss the therapeutic. Paxlovid has quite a list of drug interactions, one of which is with an anti-coagulant Susie takes called Clopidogrel (aka Plavix). Considering Susie’s history of multiple strokes, temporarily stopping a critical medication did not make sense for a therapeutic lacking strong evidence.
