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This is my 19 year old daughter Rosie. Today marks 2 weeks that she has been the sickest in her entire life. She is positive for Covid-19. We haven’t seen a many experiences shared of what this illness has been like for healthy young adults, so here’s a thread
Her only underlying disease/condition is/was childhood asthma. She is excellent with handwashing hygiene, social distancing, and always wearing a mask in public. But she still got it.
The unknown factor is where she was exposed because she had traveled. In the 14 days prior to her first symptom, she had been to Michigan (to move her stuff to Utah where the family recently moved, and drive her car back), 4 days in Utah, then she drove to LA for vacation.
Her first symptom was ear pain. She went swimming in her grandma’s pool, and thought it was swimmer’s ear. Headache, body aches, scratchy throat, low-grade fever and GI symptoms followed in the next few days. Because her main complaint was her ears, we didn’t expect Covid
She was about to leave my in-law’s house for a family reunion with us. But we wanted to be really careful with any symptoms with a pandemic brewing, so she camped out at grandma’s while we headed south.
While we were trying to enjoy being with extended family, she was in misery. That’s when cough and shortness of breath began. Her fever never went above 99.8, but her ears continued to ache like crazy.
We left California, drove home with as few stops (wearing a mask) as possible, and she proceeded to spend the next few days in bed. I had her check her temperature and pulse ox a few times a day, which has remained normal.
Thursday (one week ago), I told her to download the Healthy Utah app, which is their Covid tracking app. We both answered the questions, and were both told to get tested. We were on hold with the Intermountian Covid hotline for 45 minutes to register for the test
We were in line at Cottonwoood Medical Tower Instacare’s line about an hour to get out swabs. It was more painful/unfcomfortable than we expected. Pro tip: call the testing site number as soon as you arrive, not when your car is at the front of the line.
We were told 24-72 hours for results. We began our home quarantine. Rosie’s symptoms hadn’t really changed - same complaints, same severity. Saturday morning, we got a call from Intermountain’s nurse - Rosie was Covid positive.
We had the opportunity to ask a lot of questions about to expect. The nurse said she only needed to quarantine for 10 days from when symptoms started, and that day was day 10. But with how a sick Rosie has been, there was no way she would feel good enough to leave the house.
The nurse didn’t have my result yet, but told me to proceed as if I was positive. And the rest of our family should get tested. Next, the super awkward part - let all the family is recently been with at the reunion of a possible Covid exposure.
I never got a call about my result. Since I’m newly returned to Utah, I had to reset my online health record account to be able to check for results. And then it was there. Negative. I was surprised because by that point, I was having some Covid symptoms myself.
On Monday morning, my toddler Lucy had a fever of 103 and was acting lethargic. We were able to get my husband’s test ordered in the Healthy Together app, but children under 2 require a pediatrician’s order. So we got a telemed appointment for Monday afternoon.
