The Unwanted Visitor That We Spent 2 Years Avoiding Finally Found Us… Our Covid Story

Those who know us know that for the last 2 year we have gone to as many extremes as we could to protect our family and my parents from Covid. We homeschooled our children last year and reduced our friend / family group to avoid too many contacts. We also ensured that the contacts we did have were with vaccinated people (as long as they were eligible). We listened and followed all of the government restrictions and gave up all larger group activities. I am thankful and proud of our last 2 years. Our mental health has been in a good place despite the state of the world… and then came along Omicron!

Omicron plays by different rules. I hope you are all as prepared as you can be, because unless you never see anyone without a mask my bet is that it will find you sometime in the next month or so. I honestly hope for you that it doesn’t, but I wanted to share our experience and some tips we have on determining if you have Covid, supplies you should keep on hand, etc. My hope is that maybe some of this information will make your experience with Covid a little less horrible.

How will I know if I have Covid?

I heard many before me say that they were fooled by Covid as they only had cold type symptoms and were surprised to find out that they actually had Covid. If you really listen to your body and ask your children lots of questions about their symptoms you will likely find a few symptoms that are not typical of colds. Hopefully these symptoms will stand out to you and even if at first if you or your children are negative, you will hold off from any contact with others until you feel confident that it isn’t Covid.

We were lucky that most of our house tested positive immediately. The girls had an exposure at their extra curricular activity (a 45 min class unmasked was all it took for Caile to catch Omicron) and some of their friends that were there tested negative multiple times before they had a positive. The girls successfully isolated for days until Ezra started showing symptoms, by then it was too late for the rest of us, so we decided we would survive it together and support each other.

What should you watch for?

The first symptom that appeared for all of us was the sore throat. This came the day before other symptoms. On each of our Day 2 we experienced different symptoms. The common cold symptoms we experienced were:

Sore Throat
Runny Nose
Stuffed Up
Cough

The symptoms that we typically don’t experience with colds, but clearly pointed to Covid were:

Headaches (pain meds did little to nothing for these headaches, when typically pain meds stops them for us)
Heavy Chest (not painful at first, just felt like someone was leaning on your chest)
Eye Sensitivity: Looking at the snow hurt (yes I know, I hate the snow, but it normally doesn’t make knife like pain behind my eyes when I look at it)
Out of breath (This was a common one for all of us… going up and down the stairs caused us to have to stop for a moment and just breath)
Eye Redness This is something both my brother in law and Ella experienced, almost like a cold in your eye for day / eye infection
Burning Lungs (Ever experience heartburn? Well this feels the same, but it is in your lungs)
Restless / Tired Legs (Your legs felt like they did a marathon only you have barely moved all day)
Sense of Smell Changed (Not a loss of sense of smell, but some smells were different than expected, for example vinegar smells horribly different to Sandy & Ella)
Sensitive Skin Clothing toughing my upper torso at all was very uncomfortable, like an itch or burn.

My biggest advice if that you are feeling any of these, do not accept the first negative. Rapid tests only show up positive when you have a high amount of the virus within your body. For the sore throat day, most rapids don’t seem to display a positive. It wasn’t until multiple symptoms had appeared that the test was positive. Please keep your contacts to a minimum until you are sure!

Do vaccines really make a difference?

Yes! 100%! Take a look at each member of our family members, their symptoms and their vaccine status. And then please go get your booster, second shot, whatever it may be for you, but get it as soon as you qualify. It really does make a difference! Also note that our family has no health conditions and are generally in really great health. The 3 older kids have each had 1 dose of antibiotics in their lives for past infections and rarely get sick. Ezra has had none and has literally had 2 colds in his life.

Caile: Double Vaccinated almost 7 months ago, but doesn’t qualify based on age for the booster
7-8 days of symptoms: sore throat, stuffy nose, runny nose, headache, body aches, racing heart, heavy lungs, random tickle cough

Ella: Double Vaccinated almost 7 months ago, but doesn’t qualify based on age for the booster
7-8 days of symptoms: sore throat, stuffy nose, runny nose, heavy lungs, smell changed

Ezra: Unvaccinated
5-6 days of symptoms: sore throat, fever, laboured breathing for days, croup cough, overall felt miserable and had stronger symptoms than the other kids.

Noah: Double Vaccinated as of 2 months ago
5-6 days of symptoms: sore throat for first 2 days followed by a stuffy / runny nose

Jen: Triple Vaccinated
5 – 6 days of symptoms: 1 day of sore throat, 1 day runny nose, remaining days were heavy / burning lungs, random tickle cough

Sandy: Triple Vaccinated (caught Covid likely before booster kicked in fully)
6 + days of symptoms: sore throat, runny / stuffy nose, chills / body aches, heavy / burning lungs, exhaustion, cough, smell changed

I should also add that the amount of days noted above was for how long it took all of these main symptoms to mostly go away. The fatigue and random tickle cough seem to remain at this point as well as Sandy / Ella’s sense of smell changes. Hopefully with each day we will all get stronger. We are still definitely on this journey of healing.

Our recommendations for being prepared for Covid / Isolation:

First, these are some items we recommend that you keep stocked in your home in case you need to isolate last minute:

Tylenol and Advil for all ages. And yes you need both. If you have a fever that will not drop or symptoms unchanged from 1 med, you need to take both to make a difference.
Kleenex: Lots and lots of soft tissue. Expect tons of runny noses.
Cough Drops: Great for the sore throat symptoms or the tickle throat cough that just won’t let up until you sooth it.
Thermometer: I ended up buying a 2nd one, so that 1 could stay with the sick and the other with non sick at the time. You have to monitor your fever many times a day, so this is important.
Vicks: This was a life saver for the girls who were VERY congested.
Humidifier: This helped Ezra through the night as he had trouble breathing on a few evenings.
Groceries: Try to keep ahead of your groceries, have things like milk, bread, whatever you eat a lot of, have some extra to last you a few days in case you have to wait for a grocery order, etc.

Next, have a plan for if you have to isolate last minute:

Who will pick up groceries / prescriptions, etc. for you? Have conversations with friends and family to have a plan of who your support systems will be for things that you need.
How will the positive person isolate? We had a number of different plans based on different scenarios. Clearly the girls can isolate without issues, but Ezra could not. We thankfully also have multiple washrooms, so we could dedicate one to the girls.

Lastly, I truly recommend a N95 mask for everyone. You can find some great charts out there (like the below) that show you how long you can be protected based on the other individuals.

I want to add that isolation can be super tough. The mental aspects of it at times can be as tough as the physical symptoms of Covid. Even if you are isolating as a family vs separate knowing that you cannot go anywhere or see anyone for the long period of time is draining. Try to find as many things to do as a family to forget about your symptoms as best you can. We played games, watched movies, gave Ezra some extra attention / playtime, etc. to try to keep our minds occupied.

I certainly don’t recommend for anyone to just catch Covid to get it over with. We have been lucky so far, but I have had many co-workers that caught Covid over the last 2 years and have some permanent side effects from it. If you want to know more, I recommend researching “Long Covid”, super scary! We also don’t know the effect it has on the developing brain or what lies ahead for us now. We have to avoid colds for the next 3 months as testing is not accurate for this time period after you have had Covid. If we get other symptoms we have to presume that we have a different strain of Covid and isolate.

I hope you can all be safe, but if Covid finds you, I hope that you recover well and take the immediate steps to protect your loved ones. We are thankful that we did not spread the Covid past our home. Be safe and take care! And please know that if any of you need anything at all during isolation, please reach out. I am happy to pick up / drop off, etc. anything that you need!

We were blessed to have amazing friends and family picking up items for us, helping out my parents since we could not, checking in constantly and even just dropping off some surprises to brighten our time in isolation. Thank you to all of you!

If you have any Covid recovery stories you would like to share, especially any tips on building back your strength and immunity after Covid we would love to hear them. Take Care Everyone! Here are some pics of our time in isolation.