There are 4 people in my household (currently) and we’ve all gotten sick over the course of the holiday season. Two of us have been tested for COVID, and two haven’t (and probably won’t be able to, because local testing facilities are so swamped right now that they’re only admitting essential workers and high-risk cases).

I was the first to get sick and the first to get tested. I took both a home test and a test a the hospital to be on the extra safe side. Both tests were negative. Notably, though, I didn’t manage to get tested until about a week after I first started showing symptoms, when I was already beginning to feel better.

However, everyone else in the house got sick days after I did, and while pretty much everyone’s experience with it was a little bit different (everyone else seems to think I had it worst. For me it felt like a bad cold/flu), in the aftermath we all sort of have similar lingering symptoms: weird sleep patterns, mild fatigue, some very mild lingering cough.

My dad was the second person to get tested, almost a full two weeks after I got my test done. He tested positive.

Complicating this is the fact that even though they made him stay home from work when he got sick, they brought him back to work on the day he was supposed to get tested, because they needed the extra hands and he needed the money and was feeling better by that point. COVID has been flying around his workplace. Did he get COVID while at work and that was what the test picked up, or was it detecting COVID because that’s what made him sick before?

If that was what made him sick before, did he get it from me? If so, why did I test negative? If not, am I likely to catch it now? Do I already have it but am asymptomatic?

No way of knowing now, because we can’t get tested anymore. (Unless we want to pay for a much less reliable home test, I suppose.)

I’m probably going to self-isolate again for another week or two just to be on the safe side. I’ve still got a big pile of Christmas presents I haven’t been able to give to my friends yet, in part because some of them also have COVID (not connected to anything at my place — they caught it at work while I was already isolating.)

I had my COVID booster shot scheduled for later this week as well, but I’ve gone ahead and rescheduled it for later in the month. I have no idea if I’ve had or will have COVID at this point but I’m going to get the booster anyway. Might as well have as much protection as I can get.