An Interesting Start to the Year

My nephews visited their relatives on their mom's side during the New Year weekend. When they came back home, one of them had a sick kitten with him. I thought it was owned by their relatives and he brought it home so he could take it to the vet. As it turned out, it was an abandoned kitten that my nephew had rescued. Since it looked really sick, I drove my nephew to an open vet clinic. Unfortunately, when we arrived, there were dozens of people there. We ended up waiting 2 hours before a vet could look at the kitten. By the time we had purchased the meds and paid all the fees, we had spent 2 1/2 hours there.

So I guess it's not a surprise that I ended up getting infected with Covid. After dodging the disease for almost two years, I finally got hit, along with hundreds of thousands of people during the surge in early January. Did I pick it up at the vet? Possibly. I could also have picked it up from the place where I bought our food for New Year. I actually dropped off a gift to one of my friends and she got it as well. We were only exposed to each other while we were outdoors for less than 5 minutes and we had masks on so I can't really tell. I also can't be sure I got it from her or she got it from me or if we maybe got it from other people. With so many people getting infected, it really is quite impossible to identify where I picked it up.

That said, I was very thankful for several things. First, I live alone in my pad so I was already quarantined. Second, my building has a very good process for handling persons under monitoring and people who have tested positive. Third, I got the symptoms at the time when I could still get an RT-PCR test and I still managed to book a home test (my building didn't allow me to leave my pad anymore so I really needed a home test). I heard that around the second week of January, it was quite impossible to book a schedule since labs were already fully booked. Fourth, no one else in my family tested positive. Considering that I interacted with all of them without a mask on during the New Year weekend, I was relieved none of them picked up Covid from me. Fifth, aside from that one friend who also tested positive, none of the other people I met up with, even for a short period of time, developed any symptoms. Finally, I developed really mild symptoms. I only had one bad day, and it wasn't that bad. I also had symptoms for just a few days. (I did have to wait for my quarantine to end before I could step out.)

It kinda feels a bit weird to be a statistic now. When I saw how many new positive cases there were on the day that I reported my positive RT-PCR test, I knew I was part of that number. Still, I'm extremely grateful that my case was really mild. And I'm also really proud of my nephew for rescuing a sick kitten. I'm also happy that our new kitten is in much better health now.