2020 Just Got More Surreal

I was in the middle of a conversation with my husband, Greg, when I glanced at my phone and noticed an email from Vault Health. I had just taken one of the new COVID-19 saliva tests exactly 24 hours prior, so I was expecting the result that evening. I had to do a double-take because I thought for sure I misunderstood what I had just read. The part of the message that was showing said “your test result is posi…” WHAT? I quickly opened the notification and saw the full message in very big, bold white letters on a deep blue background: “Pang Foua Rhodes your test result is POSITIVE for SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19.”

I shook my head in disbelief and interrupted Greg, “Hon, I tested positive! I’m positive for COVID!” I don’t even remember his initial words, but he quickly followed with, “It’s OK. We’ll figure out what to do.” And then we went into emergency and risk containment mode.

The next couple hours were spent letting our families know and contacting the dozen or so people that I had interacted with during the week. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), contact tracing should be done for “close contacts” who are any individuals coming within 6 feet of an infected person for a total of 15 minutes or more within a 24-hour period, starting from two days before illness onset or two days prior to the test specimen collection until the infected person is isolated. We chose to go back five days from the test time to do the contact tracing.

That was the afternoon of Halloween; just in time for us to turn our porch lights off so we would not get any trick-or-treaters at our (perhaps infected) front door. In any case, we were too busy rearranging our home and our calendars to bother with the interruption of the ringing doorbell. I moved some of my clothes and toiletries into the guest bedroom and bathroom and turned our dining room into my own little kitchen. Meanwhile, Greg disinfected the house and then stayed up till the early morning hours creating our online Sunday service, since we had to cancel in-person service that very next day. Somewhere in that timeline, my faithful pastor, greatest cheerleader, and gracious husband came to me and prayed for and with me.

That first night of quarantine felt so surreal as I lay in a strange bed by myself and heard from down the hallway Greg and our two puppies getting ready for bed without me. I had tested positive for coronavirus. POSITIVE! But I was asymptomatic and felt perfectly fine! I had no idea I was infected, let alone contagious, and would have gone on with life as normal (COVID normal, that is) if I had not gone to get tested. The thought that I might have already infected other people weighed on my mind, but there was peace, knowing that God had been with me every minute of those inadvertently infectious moments and He would uphold and sustain all of my family and friends no matter what transpires.

I fell asleep with a crooked smile on my face. I, one of the most cautious and careful people I know, had contracted COVID-19. How ironic! And how very humbling.