Faces of the Fight from Cherie Kapell Brown: Then one day, we saw two lines
By Cherie Kapell Brown, Director of Inpatient Surgical Care and Trauma in Saskatoon and redeployed RN to Saskatoon ICUs
The last 20 months have been unlike any other I’ve experienced as a health-care worker. My previous years nursing and leading in ICU and in surgery simply can’t compare to what myself, my team and my family have endured during COVID-19, and particularly during this fourth wave. I often worry about the stress the pandemic is taking on my colleagues, patients and family.
To help manage my fears, I have advocated strongly for COVID-19 vaccinations and I am happy that my husband, two children over 12 and me have all been vaccinated (my youngest child is patiently waiting for her chance to get one). And since the addition of Home Antigen Test Kits for health-care workers and their families, I have been diligent with testing twice a week.
My kids think the regular testing is great because we set it up like a science experiment and test three kids, my husband, and myself. Every time we had done it, we saw the one line indicating a negative result.
Until the day we didn’t.
On September 23, we saw two lines on one of the tests, which means a positive result.
My shock and disbelief was quite astounding. I even repeated the test because my brain could not accept the result. This was a positive result for my 16-year-old, double-vaccinated, asymptomatic daughter.
While waiting for the results of the second test, we all washed hands, put on masks, distanced, and wiped down every surface we could think of – slightly neurotic! Again, two lines. What happened next is likely what everyone else has experienced when believing someone in their house is positive for COVID-19: we called 811 (talked to a fantastic nurse), got swabbed for a PCR test at the testing site (another great health-care worker), followed all guidelines and tried to remain calm and rational (which was rather tough). I took comfort knowing that she was double vaccinated and the science behind the vaccine would protect her.
It took me a while to write all this down because I was scared. I know how devastating COVID-19 can be, I know how easily the Delta variant can spread and I could not put my pen to paper until I knew where our family was heading.
But today, I got some great news. My oldest daughter, who had tested positive, became mildly symptomatic for about six days. Her worst symptom was a loss of taste and smell. She is now fully recovered.
The rest of our family, friends and close contacts remained negative.
We are a family who does our part. Four of the five of us are fully vaccinated (the fifth would be but is still too young). We test regularly. When one of us tested positive, we followed all public health measures and recommendations.
We still do not know how COVID entered our lives but thanks to prevalence testing and vaccinations, the impact was small and we did not pass it along to others. Thank you to everyone who got vaccinated for doing their part so we can come out of this fourth wave as soon as possible and see an end to the devastation of the pandemic.
