Last updated on November 5th, 2020 at 12:11 am
Where COVID Testing Gets Inconvenient
“Get used to it, buddy—this probably won’t be your last one.”
— Sarah to our six-year-old as a long swab’s inserted up his nostril to test for COVID-19
I’m not one to stand in line for tickets or the latest restaurant opening, but if you want me to wait two hours to get a COVID-19 test for my kids, apparently I’m about that life.
After catching a slight cough last weekend that’d be nothing to worry over in The Before Times, we feared that they wouldn’t take our four-year-old in his kindergarten class, so at 7:50 Wednesday morning, I got in line at Michael Garron Hospital to get COVID-19 tests for the fam.
But don’t get me wrong, this was no easy undertaking—I was already fiftieth in line, and that’s before counting the extra people who were doing what I was doing… snagging spots early so their kids would have to wait as little as possible.
And it’s a good thing, too, because despite showing up forty minutes early for doors opening at 8:30, we’d spend over two hours in line, much of that with a couple of kids who didn’t shy away from letting us know how they really felt.
What it’s like to get a test for COVID-19.
Now, did all four of us need to get COVID tests? No, but it was better to be safe than sorry. After all, even if our youngest was negative, if another case got in the house because we didn’t bother to check, what would this all have been for, anyway?
So we stood in that line, armed with devices and snacks waiting to experience this test that everyone’s been talking about.
And experience we did. After getting triaged into the paediatric line the hospital just opened up that day, we handed our health cards over and answered some questions. And after that? We had swabs inserted deep into our nostrils, giving probing sensations in our nasal cavities. For Sarah and I, it was mildly uncomfortable, requiring a few sniffs afterwards to move past it, but though our kids complained of the pain for a moment, they soldiered on very well, ready to go home to play the day away. Funnily enough, we got a school email while in line for the test saying we could now send asymptomatic children in (which we couldn’t before), but we didn’t see it till lunchtime, so I guess our eldest lucked out.
The aftermath: four negative results, three days off of school, and one experience we don’t want to make a habit of.
We’d get our results late Friday night through the link and test IDs they gave us—four negatives across the board and permission to send both kids back to school on Monday. It’s a process we don’t look forward to going through every time they get a cold, but with numbers on the rise and living in the middle of one of our country’s hotspots, you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.
But all that said, I hope you’re all keeping safe and healthy out there, because the less people we have to treat, the better. With summer now well behind us, it’s time we all buckle down and become part of the solution instead of this aggressively massive problem.
Be well out there, everyone, and we’ll see you at the next post!
