Today is the last day of my bedroom imprisonment.
My consignment to household oblivion began a week ago Thursday with diarrhea. I didn’t think much of it until the next morning when I awoke with a sore throat and sinus congestion. “Who gets diarrhea with a sore throat and congestion?” I wondered.
By mid morning, I had a a serious headache and felt like I had a five hour jet lag. I looked up the symptoms for COVID and realized I had five out of nine of them.
Since my 89 year old mother-in-law lives with us and Patti and I are also in the high risk category, I immediately made a beeline for the bedroom.
My symptoms were on the mild end of the scale, so the standard prescription is to isolate at home for ten days. Great, ten whole days alone in my bedroom.
I stood in the far corner of the room wearing a disposable mask while Patti came in, also wearing a disposable mask, and quickly got everything she needed to move into our spare bedroom. It felt like we had just had a huge fight and my wife was leaving me.
After she left and shut the door, reality settled in: “I have to spend over a week alone in this one room.”
Fortunately, I’ve had my online ministry to keep me occupied. But being in quarantine meant that I missed our daughter Marietta’s baby shower and that Patti and I had to spend our 41st anniversary celebrating with face time on our cell phones. Yuck.
I consulted with two different doctors at Kaiser and they both thought I should get tested. It took a while, but I finally got tested six days out.
The test came back negative. But since it has a 30% false negative rate, my doctor said that I should still consider myself positive and continue with the isolation until the ten days are up.
So….why did I bother getting tested in the first place?
We are thankful to the Lord that neither Patti nor my mother-in-law are showing any symptoms. And Patti has been stellar providing me with room service. I could get used to that.
I also want to give a shout out to Matt Warner, my good friend, fellow New Commandment board member, and fellow Faithful Hands team member at Crossroads, for coming over and mowing our lawn.
Thanks, Matt. Love you, Bro.
As for me, I am without symptoms now and doing fine. Can’t wait until tomorrow.
Freedom!
But Honey, if you’re reading this, I’m out of coffee for my coffee maker.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North American and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt their widowed and single parents in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry
_______________________________________________________________
Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
_______________________________________________________________
