Starting 2022 with COVID
RSL Ambassador CJ Pearce describes her experience fighting Covid 19
The year 2022 did not start quite as I expected.
In the early hours of New Year’s Eve, my 17-year-old Jorja woke me up to tell me she wasn’t well. She said her back was killing her, and she had a monster headache. As any mum would do, I gave her some Panadol and sat with her for an hour until the paracetamol kicked in. The following day, when I woke her to see how she was feeling, I found that she was burning up. With a temperature of 39.4 degrees, I had a feeling that this wasn’t going to be a common head cold. We live in South East Queensland, and Jorja works in hospitality. With the borders open, Queensland’s COVID numbers were starting to soar.
I found our local COVID testing facility and popped her in the back of the car with a pillow and a cold face washer. She felt that unwell that there was no way we could have gone into a walk-in facility, so I was very thankful for the drive-through service. Having travelled interstate the previous week, I had experienced firsthand the lengthy waits for getting tested and was trying to manifest a short line. Thankfully we only had to wait 45 minutes to get tested.
Although I had only been in contact with Jorja for half a day as I had been away, I thought I should get tested too, since I was already there. The nurse was quite upset I had brought Jorja out and suggested I should have had her take a rapid antigen test - if only it were that easy.
So we cancelled our plans and spent New Year’s Eve on the couch watching Netflix with the alarm going off every four hours to remind me to give Jorja more Panadol to keep her temperature down.
New Year’s Day saw Jorja’s temperature lower, but she started to get a stuffy nose and a terrible cough. For the next three days, Jorja pretty well slept all day and all night before starting to feel better.
On the third day, I woke up feeling fairly average with a scratchy throat and a sore back and feeling extremely lethargic. So much so that I slept in till 7 am, which NEVER EVER happens! Then on 5 January, we got the text to say both Jorja and I tested positive for COVID.
The first thing I did was laugh; that sounds strange, I know, but I didn’t know what to think. I think there was a little bit of fear, not knowing what would happen next. We have all been watching the news for the past two years, reading the stats. However, living in Queensland, none of it seemed real as we never had to endure the lengthy lockdowns.
By the time I received the text message, both Jorja and I were feeling much better, but due to being positive, the whole household had to go into isolation. By that stage, my partner started showing the same signs and symptoms but being a man, of course, he was twice as bad – so much worse than ‘man flu.’
My eldest daughter Analiese went to get tested the following morning. Having heard that wait times could now be up to seven hours long, Analiese decided to get up at 4.30 am to line up for her test. By the time she arrived at the testing site, the line was already a kilometre long. Five hours later, she finally got tested. Analiese sat by her phone for the next five days, waiting for the text to set her free as she had no symptoms whatsoever. Her main complaint was that she was missing out on working and earning some much-needed dollars before heading to university in February. Finally, on day five, she got her text saying she was COVID positive – WITH NO SYMPTOMS! But because she was positive, she had to isolate for another two days. A fate worse than death for an 18-year-old!
We were very fortunate to have lovely friends look after us and bring us groceries and meals. If it weren’t for them, we would have been very hungry as COVID had wreaked havoc with online grocery deliveries taking three to four days to deliver and Uber Eats had no drivers for over a week!
My experience with COVID has taught me that you should never take your health for granted. It can disappear overnight. I’m grateful that my family and I weren’t affected too badly and that we could recover in the comfort of our own home. I look back to those two weeks and try to see the positives, which is not hard to do - hanging out with my family without having to be anywhere or do anything is extremely rare these days.
Stay safe everyone in these crazy times! Look out for your neighbours and friends and reach out for help if you need it.
- CJ
