Tag Archives: sore throat

So far, so good

Posted on by
25

My husband is recovering from Omicron. He’s up and around — but not anywhere near me. I’m hanging out in the casita. I discovered things the casita needs to make it truly a separate living space from the rest of the house. I’m enjoying setting it up.

cat on a dresser with ceramic cat
Olive in the casita.

Amazing that you don’t realize what is lacking until you live in a space for a few days. For example, the casita now boasts dish towels, oven mitts, real dishes, a bath mat, condiments, laundry soap, trash bags, aluminum foil and clear wrap. Lots of little things to make it functional.

My apologies to previous guests who’ve stayed in our casita. It was really more of a glorified bedroom. Now, it’s a complete living space — and we’ll never even have to interact with our guests again. Just kidding.

I’ll be in this space for the next five days while my husband is quarantining. I didn’t want to traipse into the kitchen whenever I needed something, because he’s been in and out of the kitchen for a week with COVID. Something I’ve heard about Omicron is that it stays on surfaces. I have no idea if this is true or not. Have you heard that? But, thanks to my sister-in-law’s suggestion, I bought Clorox wipes. I got those at Target along with everything else.

I was fighting myself on the first night to not go into the master bedroom to check on my husband, and to stay out of the kitchen. He was so sick and in so much pain, I decided it wasn’t worth it to get it, too. So, here I sit in my own little space. The casita was a life-saver when we moved in because we bought the furniture from the prior owners. Our furniture didn’t arrive with us, so at least we had a place to sleep!

The casita is connected to the rest of the house by a hallway. It has it’s own vents, heat and air, so I’m not being infected with my husband’s germs. Kitty Olive has decided this is a good place to be, so I got her cat food, litter box and cat grass and she’s hanging out with me.

Have you or family members quarantined with other people in the house? How did you manage? Have you thought about preparing a place for someone who gets sick to be separated from the rest of the family? Why do you think some people in the same family get COVID, while others do not?

kitchen with yellow oven mitts and dishtowels.
Getting the casita stocked and organized. Like the oven mitts and dish towels?

What a week

Posted on by
26
Sunrise in Berkeley from the front steps
Sunrise from my son’s porch Thursday morning.

I arrived in Berkeley Saturday night to help my son for a week post surgery.

I called my husband repeatedly who remained at home. Normally, I talk to him lots of times each day when we’re apart. Even when he went into an office for work, we called each other several times a day. When I hadn’t heard from him in 20 hours — I was worried.

Finally, he called me back and he sounded horrible. He said his throat felt like razor blades and he was congested and had aches and pains.

He called his doctor for an appointment when he felt even worse. No appointments available for two weeks. You know where this is headed, right? He found a tele-med appointment and called me Thursday morning at 6:30 a.m. — after his appointment. The diagnosis was Omicron. (Razor blades painful sore throat is the number one symptom.)

I was sitting in my son’s house with the kids begging me not to go home to my COVID-infected husband and house. They want me to stay. I’m sure my son and his girlfriend welcome my help, but don’t want me to catch the virus, either.

I’m terribly worried about my husband all alone in the state of Arizona with COVID. He’s already sicker than I remember him ever being.

We’ve been double vaxxed and boosted.

The kids received rapid tests from Amazon and they made me take one. It was the longest ten minutes waiting for the line to appear on the test.Two lines COVID, one line Negative. I cooked my son his slow cooking oats — waiting for the results to show.

Negative.

My husband works remotely from home. I’m home all the time. We’re together whenever we go out — at least this has been our standard operating procedure since COVID hit the country and we moved to a new state. How did my husband get it and not me?

I went back and forth on whether I should stay in California for a few more days, or whether I should take a flight back immediately. I finally decided to stick to the original plan and to take my noon flight home today. I’ll take a Lyft from the airport and move into the casita. Hopefully far enough away to not catch Omicron, but close enough to be there if my husband needs medical help.

What a stressful scary day. The other weird thing is when COVID hit so close, I felt like we had done something wrong. Like we’re guilty or dirty. I never felt that way with the flu or a cold. I think it’s because there’s so much politics going on with this virus.

If anyone in your family or close friends have gotten COVID, did they have a mild case or was it severe? How long did the symptoms last? Did part of your family get it but not everyone?