That’s legitimately awesome. Nothing was gonna keep Lambie from Lambie’s human!
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I got covid (for the first time, having avoided it for 2 years) last week.
Symptoms were only bad for 2-3 days and now I’m fine (but still showing as positive). Hope everyone who got it recently is doing okay.
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Mine is still just a heavy cold. Not serious enough to keep me from working (from home) but annoying enough that I’m not looking forward to chairing a 20 person workshop tomorrow…
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Sorry, I referenced two posts yesterday but never got to writing. Writing is helpful.
So, Children’s Hospitals. They are hard places.
The atrium is full of hot air balloons. The hallways are decorated with whales and manta rays, and the floors have animal paw-prints showing you the way. The lights are covered with gels of stars or tree branches. Everything is fun and cheer.
And then you lay your child on a table, surrounded by tall figures in masks. They put a gas mask on her face and one of them leans close to quietly say, “hold her down.”
And you do.
Even as you, yourself, lean close to whisper your heart into her ear, you hold her down.
This isn’t what childhood is meant to be. The entire place is full of what childhood isn’t meant to be.
Then we, as parents, weep while they sleep so we can smile and cuddle when they wake up. We, as parents, meet eyes over their heads on the elevator to just say, “we’re going home. We’re going home.”
Part of the day felt ugly, like the place was a lie. But later I saw that the hospital is joining us in the labor of parents. We will do the work. We will hold the fear so you are not afraid. We will carry the ugliness so you can be a child, for just a little longer. The needles, the tubes, the pounding machines; those are for us. The whales, the stars, the paw prints… those are for you.
Because we love you. Because we would take it all, every last bit of it, for you if we could. We can’t, but we will carry all we can.
It was a heavy day. I love her so much.
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Really sorry to hear all this! Neither of ours have had anything serious (apart from a bad asthma attack) thankfully, but even their pinched pained faces over a broken bone was enough to crush my heart so I truly hope everything is going well for you.
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We are facing the possibility that she will have much better control over her legs for a 3-12 month window. And the opportunity in that window to build muscle and motor mapping that will remain permanently even after the window closes.
It’s hard to hope because it opens you up for disappointment. But we are all, her included, watching hopefully.
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Man, I don’t know what to say. If I was a religious man, you all would be in my prayers. You’re in my thoughts and I’m sending all the good vibes I can.
Come on, Universe. Be cool.
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Regretting going to work the day after my booster shot. 150 minutes to go…
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Today everyone is back on campus after a week and a half of parties and vacations. We’re all placing bets on what attendance will look like at the beginning of next week.
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We’re thinking of introducing a mask mandate for our online meetings
I haven’t caught it, but everyone with children has.
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My partner had been sniffling and coughing for a couple of weeks. All symptoms of her seasonal allergies, really. But when we heard that our niece tested positive for COVID after a midnight visit to the emergency room for a 103.5 F fever this past weekend, we decided to get some home-test kits, just to be safe.
My test was a clear negative. My partner’s test showed the faintest of lines, though you couldn’t actually tell it was pink, just that it was a line of a different shade than the rest of the strip. After consulting a nurse friend, we decided that, in all likelihood, her recent “allergies” was likely COVID. She entered her information into a CDC website (what symptoms and when they first appeared) and the website indicated that as of today she is safely outside of the contagious window.
Which is good news, because it’s her birthday. Two years ago today, we had just finished isolating for 14 days in order to get together with her parents as the first of the pandemic-birthdays her family has celebrated.
Her “seasonal allergies” symptoms that we now believe to have been COVID-19 are strikingly similar to what I was dealing with back in December. I never got tested because I never had a fever. It makes me wonder how many times we may have been exposed.
And part of me wishes that her test had been just slightly more conclusive; it would make it a little easier to get on with life if we were absolutely positive that we had direct COVID exposure and that none of our 3 children had severe symptoms as a result. Throughout the pandemic, my biggest fear has been having one of my children in a pediatric ICU.
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I just had the same experience. Last week I felt like allergy season was in full swing, sneezing, runny nose, cough, congestion. By Friday afternoon, though, my throat started feeling really sore to the point that it seemed more than allergies. We had gotten the take-home tests that the government sent out so i went ahead and tried it, but came back clean. So it appears I just have a head cold.
Don’t really feel all that bad, just gunky.
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I don’t know if your at-home tests are the same as ours, but I had several negative results while I was mildly symptomatic before I went and got one of the tests you send away to a lab, which came back positive…
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I suspect false-positives and false-negatives are both common with these tests. Very clearly on the box it indicates the test is only approved for use under an emergency authorization and “can only be used during an emergency”… Suggesting, perhaps, taking the test may assist during a heart attack… Or maybe the company was unable to get permanent approval.
The “emergency use authorization “ means it hasn’t gotten full approval. Most of what’s not been approved are things that require the passage of time. Hard to test shelf life without storing it for a while. Stiff like that.
But , yes, the accuracy of the tests leaves much to be desired, especially for very mild infoamon vaccinated people.
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I have read that the rapid tests are very accurate at identifying contagious cases. Like, 98% accuracy rate if you are shedding virus that could infect someone. But they are too weak to be reliable for asymptomatic cases.
Take that with a grain of salt as the information seems to change periodically?
But to back it up, our family members who have been sick have repeatedly been told by medical professionals to skip the PCR for a few months after having COVID, as it generally continues to turn up positive for weeks or months after the actual infection, and to use rapid tests instead to determine if they are “over it.”
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Interesting that, as when I took my RAT test, I had been a day already with symptoms, and it is supposed that you are most contagious the first 5 days. I always take these dates and periods of time with a pinch of salt.
On the other hand, our tests requested to wait for 15 minutes, and all 4 of us had our positive test showing up after 2 or 3. So it was pretty clear there was plenty there early on to bring up that positive result, while the day before, there wasn’t.
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As I understand it, false positives are not something you need to worry about. False negatives are relatively common if you have no symptoms or the timing of the test is too early.
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Sunday night: 5 hours sleep
Monday night: 6 hours sleep
Tuesday night: 7 hours sleep
Wednesday night: 5 hours sleep
Thursday night: Utterly exhausted. Went to bed at 8:30pm, expecting to fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. Lay awake for an hour before finally dozing off. Woke up at 1am. Woke up at 3am. Woke up at 4:30am. At 5:15, following 45 minutes of being wide awake, got up for the day so that I could be wide awake doing things inside of being wide awake wishing I was asleep. Spent Friday feeling tired.
About to go to bed; feeling trepidatious. Come on brain, I know you know how to do this…
Edit: Woo! 10+ hours sleep!
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When I’ve had insomnia, I’ve found a hot shower before getting into bed can sometimes help.
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