Dear Teacher with a Mildly Sick Child,
I am currently sitting in the parking lot of my son's pediatrician's office. They won't let patients enter the building without a negative COVID test.
My son has a fever of 99.2, a headache, and nausea. Last December if he thought a "tummy ache" would have been grounds to stay home, I would have laughed in his face.
In fact, before hand sanitizer ruled the world, he could have had a fever of 103, and I would have advised him to take two Tylenol and get on the bus. I would remind him Act V of Romeo and Juliet could not be trusted to a sub, nor could his life if he kept up the game of woe.
But times they are a changin'.
Today if you send your kid to school with a slight sniffle, paranoia barges in without consent. You start to think a casual sneeze might cause DCF to take your kids from you for neglect.
So here we are in our car where a text message alerts us that a nurse is headed out in a hazmat suit. She looks like she stepped out of the scene in E.T. where four doctors, who look like storm troopers, try to revive E.T.
I want to ask if all this is necessary, but I know better.
Anxiously, we wait in the car for the results. Our lives hang in the balance.
The phone rings. He is negative. A sigh of utter relief. Others have not been as fortunate.
A negative result means he can enter the building and civilization- what is left of it.
I guess I can too.
Now we just wait to see if he has a sinus infection, the flu, a common cold or all the other typical ailments we once had the luxury of taking a day off work to combat.
The verdict determines it's a common cold. "Gargle with salt water, take two Tylenol, and get on the bus," she says.
I am ready for a world where Purell is no longer king, but today, I am extra grateful.
I pray for more negative test results as I think to myself, "Will we ever return to a pre-Covid world?"
-CDB
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