My mom, a cancer patient with a very low white blood cell count and who has lost a bunch of weight recently due to medication side effects, but currently holding her own, lives in the Villages in Florida. She was in a closed car- no masks, with a friend for three hours round trip, talking and laughing, and they hugged when they parted. Her friend had a crazy sneezing fit in a grocery store while waiting for my mom to finish her oncologist appointment (she didn’t think anything of it, but imagine the other shoppers…), then got really sick the very next day, tested positive for Covid, and was reportedly VERY sick (but not sick enough for the hospital) for two weeks.
My mom has not gotten sick. She was tested, but it’s been 25 days and she has yet to get a test result. I cannot explain how she did not get this virus- talk about someone who should have been taken down hard- she’s either exceedingly lucky, or maybe it has to do with this T cell immunity that some scientific papers have been talking about. Who knows. She is definitely a cat with nine lives through the last three years of her cancer journey (lung cancer, no less, with a chaser of brain tumors). Knowing this, I’m not changing a thing about what I’m doing to keep Covid at bay, I’m just calling her very, very lucky in the absence of any kind of definitive explanation.
P.S. The friend got scared straight and is moving back to her home state, after a number of years in Florida, to be near family.
25 days to get a test result? That is not normal, nor is it acceptable. I’d say that the test result has been lost, or the notification was screwed up.
Yes, last Monday was “fourteen business days” which was the latest date she was told by which she would have heard. I’ve heard stories of samples no longer being viable because they didn’t get to them quickly enough. Either that or result lost in some bottleneck somewhere. Who knows.
She has a friend who had an appointment for a Covid test, the friend arrived, waited and waited and waited, and then bailed on the appointment. Not too long after, she got a letter stating her test result was positive. So yeah, testing is going GRRREAT down there.
I neglected to add the detail that my mom turns 80 this year. She WAS fit before she was diagnosed with cancer, and she’s been through several bouts- lung, brain, abdomen- over the last three years and was hospitalized as recently as early last winter for a terrible infection and has taken the last 9 months or so to try to rebound, but she’s nowhere close to her former self. So- she’s defffffffinitely in the at-risk category. I certainly hope that if she hasn’t come down with anything yet that she won’t.
Sadly she’s one who is using this anecdote as proof that this virus is “not what it’s being made out to be by the media.This would be nothing if there wasn’t an election this year.” BUT her friend was sick enough that I don’t think she’s going to play fast/loose with it. Let’s hope…
Did she/advocates around her simply passively accept this without any attempt at follow up, or did she or someone acting on her behalf make a call or two to find out why?
She’s made numerous calls, however she’s notoriously a pretty passive person who does not ask questions or demand answers. She gets her yes/no answer, says thank you, hangs up the phone.
My 90 year old mother has nurse visits at her home twice a week (she has small wounds on her ankle that won’t heal due to circulation problems). Anyway, one of the nurses that has been visiting (twice a week remember) Is living with her husband that has been diagnosed with COVID and is quarantined at home.
So this nurse is living with a COVID positive husband, but is going out to visit the elderly in their homes. Well, she’s not visiting my mom anymore.
I’m a programmer, and have been working from home. Non of us are going into work except a few that have to work on hardware. I am deemed to be vulnerable because I see my mom a few times a month. Because of that, I’m not allowed in the office at all.
A coworkers husband has a compromised immune system. She’s not allowed in either.
Those that do go in have to fill out a form on line for when they are going to be there, and there is a greatly limited number of workers that may be in an department at the same time. Not sure what the calculation is, but it’s based on sq/ft. I think it breaks down to two people, but that is avoided.
