And Then, Tyler Contracted COVID

Weeks 7 & 8: The Pause Button

I’m hitting pause.

Tyler has COVID.

And so do my mom and dad.

Here is how it happened.

And Then, Tyler Contracted COVID

I stop the water pouring from the kitchen faucet as my phone lights up with the name of our good family friend, and my children’s pediatrician. He must have our coronavirus test results I think to myself as I accept the call, and he gives me the news — our test results are in, Nora: negative. Everett: negative. Me: negative. Tyler (long pause) and the doctor says out loud —verbatim —what I’m already thinking, “Shit. He’s positive.”

We quickly talk through the necessity of a 14-day quarantine for me and the kids, the possibility of symptoms still developing (even with negative tests) for the three of us, and how to respond to Tyler’s positive.

I hang up the phone and glance at the clock: 8:30 AM, just 30 minutes until Nora’s two hour long telehealth palliative care appointment, but Oh sweet goodness, I’ll have to cancel, I think to myself in a brain-fog frenzy as I reach for Clorox wipes under the kitchen sink, snag a face mask from my purse, and rush down the hallway as my thoughts race, Public enemy # 1: COVID- 19 —is in my house — dear God, it’s sleeping in my bed!! And it’s using my husband as an unsuspecting host!! He has to leave.

I open the door to our bedroom, and Tyler, still in bed, wrapped tightly in our comforter, coughs — inches from my pillow — and lifts his head to ask, “Can you bring me my water?”

I nod, and bluntly explain, “Ummm…our COVID results are back — the kids and I are negative, but you tested positive…”

“Oh, thank God, this makes me feel so much better,” he says with a sigh of relief as he closes his eyes and pushes the side of his face deeply into his pillow. “At least I know I’m not just being a wimp — I feel so sick…”

“I’m so sorry babe,” I say as I glance at the clock across the room, noting the time and the rapidly approaching palliative appointment, “So clearly, you aren’t going to make it to Nora’s doctor appointment, and I have to go to war with COVID by disinfecting the whole house and we need to notify home nursing — no nurse, no school, and we are now homebound for the next 14 days — can you make all those calls while I do the  appointment? And I really think you need to go to my parents’ house Tyler — the COVID house.”

He groans, eyes still closed, “Can we talk about it after the appointment?”

“Sure, but I need you to make those calls.”

“On it,” he says, reaching for his phone on the nightstand — eyes still closed.

I shut the door and quickly wipe it down with a Clorox wipe, before I yell to the kids down the hall, “Who wants to watch “Winnie the Pooh?!”

“Me!!!!” yells Everett, “and Nora too!” he shouts.

Winnie The Pooh plays as I continue to frantically sanitize surfaces and handles around my home, until, quite suddenly, I feel a wave of exhaustion — not sleepiness — something more like fatigue… I stop cleaning and breathe — and attempt to reestablish equilibrium — a slow inhale followed by a long exhale. Then, a sudden and horrifying thought surfaces: fatigue is a symptom of COVID.

I stop my cleaning and lay down in the middle of the hallway, and attempt to conjure positive and rational thoughts, Nope, it’s not coronavirus, you just need a minute —you’re just tired — anyone would be given the morning you’ve had. I continue to breathe, but my thoughts spiral, how do I not have symptoms? Clearly, my symptoms have not manifested like Tyler’s and my parents because the virus is conserving its strength and building a tiny army to declare war on my lungs— oh dear God, it’s strategizing!!!

I spread my limbs out across the cool wood floor, the cold feels grounding and something like refreshing until, another thought enters my mind, What if cold temperatures feel refreshing because I’m fevering? Oh dear God where is the thermometer?

I sit up in a whirl to Everett standing in the hallway, staring at me.

“Are you making a snow angel?”

I quickly stand up, “Yes! A snow angel!”

He rushes past me on his way to the bathroom and yells over his shoulder, “But Mama, can you pause the movie?! I have to go potty!!”

I pause Winnie the Pooh as a frozen, full- screen image of a frenzied, frantic, and dictatorial Rabbit stares at me from the frame of the TV. I reach for the thermometer in the kitchen to scan my forehead — 98.3.

I let out a long exhale, relieved, and I take another deep breath, knowing if I were to think about my exposure to coronavirus rationally, it is unlikely the personified virus possesses the organizational capacity and leadership to coordinate a covert advance on my lungs without arousing more symptoms. Maybe I should look for more evidence of illness before I make snow angels in the hallway.

Everett zooms across the room and plops himself on a pile of pillows next to his sister, “I’m back! Mama I’m back! Can you play the movie, please?”

Rabbit unfreezes from the TV as I glance at the clock, 8:55AM and I open my laptop and begin the process of logging Nora in to her appointment. I quickly tell Nora’s physician our family circumstance, and express I may not be able to focus well.

She listens and calmly receives my words, before she begins to affirm my ability to navigate the situation by breaking down each active step (I had already taken) to support my parents and Tyler. But how is she so calm? I think to myself. Before I remind myself, she’s a palliative care physician, for children. She’s an expert in projecting peace and calm— thank God for gifted doctors who create calm out of chaos.

As the appointment comes to a close, I looked down at my phone, 10:50 AM to see a text from Tyler, “I hunger.”

I text back, “What would you like?”

“Eggs, toast and your dad’s pomegranate jelly.”

“I’ll leave it at the door — don’t emerge.”

I restart another movie for my children, then reach for a frying pan. Suddenly, the words “14 day quarantine”, surface and I am struck by visions of making each and every meal, and leaving it at the door of my bedroom, for a fevering, coughing, sick husband, and I realize: I just became a caregiver x 3.

I set the frying pan aside, loop my facemask over my ears, and march down the hallway and open the door of our bedroom —full and wide — to say clearly and firmly, “Tyler, you HAVE to leave. It’s not an option. I will not be managing Nora’s care, without a nurse, Everett, while slathering your toast in pomegranate jelly and cleaning the house like a frontline coronavirus healthcare- worker for the next 14 days. You have to go to my parents. Now.”

I don’t wait for his reply, shut the door, and huff into the hallway as I hear him laugh and shout through the door, “What happened to IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH Jesse!!”

I turn on my heal and march back to the bedroom to declare, “It’s a PANDEMIC and you are a host to public enemy number ONE — what if Nora gets it? She’s high risk! What if I get it? Out, out, out! Why aren’t you moving? Pack! Pack! Pack!”

Tyler laughs and swings the comforter to the floor to move out of bed and says, still smiling, “I just like to see you all riled up.”

I let out a long exhale, and march back into the hallway, shutting the door behind me and yell, “You have 30 minutes!”

 “Don’t tell me what to do!” he says, still laughing.

I join Everett and Nora on a pile of pillows by the TV, as Everett wraps his arms around my neck to ask, “Is Daddy awake?”

I pull him into my lap to explain, “Daddy’s awake, but he’s sick like Nanna and Papa, he’s going to sleep at their house until he feels better.”

“I want to sleep there too!”

“But you are strong and heathy! You’re not sick — Daddy will be back so soon.”

“No, I’m sick too! I need my mask, where is my mask? I have to go to Papa’s house.”

“Ev, it’s just Daddy going, and he will be back so so soon. How about we find some things Daddy can bring with him to help him, Nanna, and Papa feel better?”

“That’s a GREAT idea Mamma!” he says as he runs to his room and Tyler slowly emerges from our bedroom — mask across his face — and a messenger bag slung across his chest, and suddenly I am struck with waves of sadness.

“I’ll see you in a few days then,” he says as Everett rushes back into the room and offers his dad three mini pumpkins and a Hot Wheels car, “to help Daddy, and Nanna and Papa feel better!”

My eyes water and I quickly distract myself from sadness by braiding Nora’s pigtail, but I can’t avoid the thought, “This is really hard, we’re going to miss him so much.” 

Tyler blows kisses to Nora from across the room, and eventually I take a deep breath to tell him, “We’re really going to miss you.”

Tyler leaves, the front door closes, and I  do my very best to look on the bright side — With Tyler gone, at least I can load the dishwasher however I want, play Christmas music before thanksgiving, and embrace the very unsexy wrist brace my doctor ordered at night for tendinitis….”

Nora stares up at me — curious, and in synch, with each of her mother’s movements, sighs and sometimes even, emotions.

She pushes her foot onto her toy drum — it ignites with a flood of chaotic noise — a welcome distraction, as Everett drops a box of cheerios from the second shelf of the pantry. The reality I have known and understood all along sets in: for fourteen days, I can’t leave the house. I can’t go running. And, I’m alone. Oh, and my parents and husband have Covid.

“Let’s get some air,” I say to the kids, lifting Nora up into her chair. I feel the strain on my wrist under her weight — the cause of my tendinitis — the repetitive movements of moving and lifting the weight of my now, forty-six-pound daughter, who requires support for almost any and all significant movement. In this moment, I can’t help but think to myself, How am I going to do this— all of this?

I wheel Nora outside as Everett lifts himself through the netting of the trampoline. Nora and I watch him bounce, up and down, “Like Tigger!” While I can’t imagine answering my own question, How am I going to do this? not today anyway, here is what I do know:

My family and I are walking into coronavirus having already cultivated our core values of perseverance, hope, humor, and something like optimism. And this I also know, here and in this moment, and in the words of my dear friend Emily Newton, as we struggled to replace batteries in a portable breast pump outside a San Diego restaurant:

“We have faced greater challenges than this!”

We will endure.

Photo Credit: Jessica Rice Photography