Don's World - 200627 - Covid-19 Quarantine, Been There, Done That.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were placed into CoVid-19 quarantine.

Let Me Explain.

My Wife works in Sarasota and I work at home writing articles such as the one you see here. My Wife and I retired over 13 years ago, and Yes, Florida is a great place to retire to. But, you can only drink so many Margaritas, lay on the beach for so many days and catch so many fish, before boredom sets in.

So, we work. She is doing something she likes and honestly so am I.

I make a few bucks from the Google ads the publishing site I use places on my articles and this added income is our “crazy money” that we blow on “stuff” for our Kids and Grandkids or often just for short vacation trips.

With this CoVid-19 epidemic and the restrictions that have been imposed on our population, Being on a computer for hours very day is its own form of self-isolation and we, like so many of our Senior Peers, we have burned our “Midnight Oils” long go.

Sure, don’t get me wrong, we go out, when we wish but again, we live our Senior lifestyle at a slower pace.

Anyway, you can imagine our surprise when my wife came home one day and told me that we needed to be tested immediately and then we needed to quarantine ourselves for at least a week.

With my wife, she was able to take her notebook computer home and hook it into my internet modem/router system. Once her computer was running on the web, she was able to get many of her daily tasks done from home without any necessary trips to her workplace.

With the combination of having her Cell phone and her Computer at home with her, she had the tools she needed and we were set up for our quarantine with only a minimal level of inconvenience.

Me? Well as I said, I already worked from home, so my day didn’t change very much at all, other than having this stranger (my wife) walking around and making noise in my otherwise quiet workplace.

When my wife called me to tell me about what had happened I did wonder about how I or anyone for that matter one got selected for immediate testing and being quarantined.

For us, it was one of those “being in the wrong place” things. As I said, my wife works and the situation was that she (whom I will refer to as person-3) worked with someone (let’s call them person-2) who was by chance around someone (person-1) who felt bad for a couple of days and decided to be tested.

And, of course, this person (person-1) tested positive for the CoVid-19 virus.

This meant that they (person-1) had to be quarantined as more tests were performed on him.

The hook in this situation is that this person (person-1) had to give the officials a list of people they had come into contact with over the past several days.

This put my wife’s co-worker on the list of people who had to be tested and quarantined. That person, (person-2) had to give up another list of people who they had come in contact with, which included my wife (person-3)

And I (person-4) was also involved because my wife and I obviously lived together.

So the procedures used informed everyone in this potential exposure chain to immediately get tested and then to go home and self-quarantine; potentially for the next 5-10 days or until the initial person (person-1) came down with the virus or not.

That was all it took. one minute my wife and i were just getting by and self-isolating in our own way and suddenly the dangers of this deadly virus became something very real to us.

Dutifully, we drove from our house to the testing site in Sarasota the very next morning and some National Guard private pulled out a very long wooden swab and stuck it up ( and seemingly deep) into our nostril. That was it, we had been tested.

No, Not My Wife! Jeez, You Guys!

My Wife and I picked up some groceries on the way home and then we tried to make the little demon sitting on our shoulders go away.

The Demon was there, with us, and he constantly reminded us that we were living a new life now and our lives had a potential to get bad, very fast.

This was probably the worst part of our week of quarantine, the constant reminder that we were truly in some level of danger.

There was one other thing that turned into a nuisance for us. All of the TV news channels were constantly airing every minuscule piece of information they could dig up about the virus, it’s constantly growing number of people that were infected, and of course the growing list of deaths from the virus.

We finally came up with a plan to manage our concerns during those days. We only watched the news in the morning, at noon, and in the evenings, for one hour at a time.

The rest of the days, we put our TVs on one of the movie networks such as Netflix or Prime movies and just let them run.

Ok, Ok, We could have just turned the TVs OFF, but it was kind of nice having a noise source in the house (other than ourselves) while we both worked.

Initially, my wife and I had been told that we could get our test results back within as soon as two days. The reality was that it actually took six days.

Our Tests Came In!

And finally, We both Tested Negative!

i can’t describe the relief we felt. Suddenly there were no more immediate threat of illness or even potential death for us. The Sun seemed brighter, the sky seemed bluer, and our cheap Chardonnay the we keep in the house, tasted sublime!

Life was Good Again, and our little Demon friend, after one look at our happy faces, ran out the door screaming to himself.

And from all of this, we now had a new respect for our face masks and the sanitation workers that were constantly cleaning everything wherever we went.

Hell, I even make it a point to personally thank the people who clean the shopping carts and tables and such before we enter any store or business.

I have a strong appreciation for what they are doing to keep me, not only healthy, but alive.

‘Nuff Said!