So this week was the week where I had to get my first COVID-19 test. I say first because I am not expecting this situation to end any time soon and I think it is going to be a rare occurrence to find someone who hasn’t had one form of COVID test.
On Monday morning I woke up with a cold. As you can probably guess this was a beautiful gift from Xander and all his school friends. The bit that really gets me is that he has NO symptoms of said cold at all!!!
I have spent two days in bed with a head full of cotton wool and my throat feeling like it has two golf balls lodged behind my tongue. Mucus is not a COVID symptom in terms of following government guidelines so Xander was still at school and Emily kept to life as normal. Then yesterday Emily woke up with a temperature!
Now we are in a whole new territory! First action of the day keep Xander off school and inform the school that the reason we are doing so is because Emily has a temperature. They have multiple emails a day from families with similar situations. Next is to give heads up to both of our companies to say that Xander is home (thus may be heard in meeting ) but also that until a test is sorted out that we are in quarantine.
Quarantine is a big issue for us. After the quarantine during lockdown and the hoarding hysteria we set up several plans to ensure we wouldn’t face the same issue again. We hired a milkman… 3 days a week he delivers milk but if we need them too, we can also get bread, fruit, eggs, yoghurts and more. So adding bread to today’s delivery was quickly achieved. We also purchased our bi-monthly butcher shop on Monday so we have enough food in the house for two weeks since I keep at least 2 weeks “stock” for all essentials.
Now comes the fun part! Booking ourselves in for a COVID test via the government website! First they ask you a short list of questions including date of birth, contact information, symptoms, where you work etc. Once this is filled out you have the option to add other members of your household if they too are experiencing symptoms. I am going to be honest and say that I booked myself a test as well as Emily more for peace of mind since Emily got a temperature. We decided against putting Xander through it though. At this point we were taken to the nearest testing centre pages and it was here that I sat for 2 hours constantly refreshing the screen to be told there are no tests.
Finally, a test centre came up 45 miles away. We were willing to drive. so I clicked the centre then the time slot I wish to visit (these are done in 30 min sessions). Pressed continue and I was taken back to the start of the process.
Cue 30 minutes of messages others I knew who had the test to find out if it was normal. It wasn’t. So I had to start it all over again and sit there for another hour refreshing the page.
Once again a testing centre popped up and it was Chessington World of Adventure theme park. I have never been to Chessington and this wasn’t really how I imagined my first visit to be. They had 46 slots available so we booked in for the 5pm slot since Emily and I both had afternoon meetings between 1pm and 3pm and Google helpfully informed us to give ourselves 2 hours for the journey.
After booking the time slot we then had to provide our car registration (if you book a walk in centre this will not be needed). After this was confirmed we finally got to the confirmation page to tell us it was all booked. Then to really put us at ease, we received emails and text messages telling us the address of the site and our booked slot plus the QR code needed to prove our booking once there.
Our drive took 2 hours and 15 minutes of Xander asking us if we were there yet. Once we arrived t was a really simple process. The staff were efficient and directed us to where we needed to go to be assisted with the test (there was an option to do it ourselves). We were each given a card (should we need to chase up the result after 48 hours) and the two members of staff assisting us explained the process and asked permission to proceed. The lovely lady doing mine even chatted with Xander a little bit and was joking with him that she was stealing my brains so he would be smarter than me. Xander thought she was hilarious.
The test was unpleasant (first the back of the throat then same swab is put up your nose) but it was over in 30 seconds. Despite that I can still feel it tickling both my throat and nose. We were in the test centre less than 10 minutes in total and the only car we saw using the facility was our own.
Driving home was a lot quicker and only took an hour and a half much to the relief of Xander who was having withdrawal from the internet
We are hoping to have our results back by the morning (super wishful thinking) so that Xander can go back to school with his friends but in reality it is likely to be tomorrow evening. Either way a negative result received before 9am on Saturday morning will mean Xander can go to his much awaited return to his swimming lessons. This weekend is the first one since March and it would just be our luck if we have to cancel it due to a cold.
I hope you are all keeping well and that when you need a test it is local and easy to book.
See you all on Saturday.
Faerydae Stitches 