Our defenses have been penetrated

[ritaxis]

So what happened is one of my daughter's coworkers came to work sick, tested positive later in the day. Now my daughter is sick & trying to isolate from her husband & child & the rest of us are doing the Schroedinger's virus shuffle. Trying to figure out what's the correct testing schedule & when I can assume that a negative test can really be trusted. How long do I have to isolate if I keep getting negative tests?

By my calculations, my first test should be tomorrow because my first possible exposure from that source would have been Monday. But I have felt ill all day so I tested today, got a negative. I honestly felt awful a few days ago and tested negative then. I didn't have any special reason to suspect exposure then but I had sixteen free tests and I figured I should test if I feel that bad. I also tested my blood pressure and blood sugar, both normal enough. No fever either. I even did an informal heart attack screen on myself, that's how bad I was feeling.

Of course, I could be somaticizing anxiety. I could. But it seems more responsible to look for physical causes that can be treated first. If I'm negative, I'll make an appointment after the testing period is over to discuss these bouts of feeling awful.

Comments

[redbird]

I am not a doctor or epidemiologist, but I gather that it takes at least two negative RAT tests to be meaningful.

Yes, definitely try to figure out why you're feeling miserable if it's not covid -- I get the feeling that a significant number of people believe, or are acting as though they believe, that covid is the only relevant infectious disease. If you (one) tested positive for covid and then test negative, it's reasonable to treat that negative test or tests as meaning you're recovered; otherwise, a negative test only indicates "not covid," but says nothing about any of the diseases we knew existed before 2020.

[ritaxis]

My thoughts exactly! The main thing that covid has done to my thinking in general is that I'm taking all sorts of disease much more seriously than in the past. I think back on how I too used to go to work and school sick and congratulate myself for being tough and brave and determined. And I used to think it was fine for kids to get "mildly" ill, that it would train up their immune systems. But apparently measles-which I didn't think of as a mild disease, at least I knew better than that, but there are people to this day who think that because it's a "childhood disease" it's not serious-apparently it makes the immune system forget everything it's learned, wiping out all those trained cells. If one virus can do that, so can others, and anyway, it's clear now that many diseases which are not all that severe in the acute phase leave various systems of the body quite weakened.

So now I'm much more protective about "minor colds" and so on & I'm willing to stay home with the grand goblin if there's snottiness around even if no "serious" disease has been diagnosed.

I'm blaming a certain portion of my fatigue and head thing on the cumulative effects of viral infections throughout my young adulthood, even though there's no solid evidence for it (my symptoms are so generalized that they're undiagnosible, at least in the health care context I can access). My daughter has something similar-but-different going on, and I'd like to spare the grand goblin if possible, because it's been really disappointing to go through life like this.