February marked the return to school for Fielder (for the first time since last March!) He had to change teachers and I of course had a lot of anxiety, but it was time for him to get back to school. We were finally done with "home school."
The rest of February and early March was fairly uneventful. Here's a picture from Sunday March 14....before we knew what was ahead!
But then...on Monday March 15 Fielder came home from school complaining that he didn't feel good. I didn't worry too much, but he definitely wasn't himself and I remember at dinner that night looking at Rob and him saying (silently) "maybe it is covid??" So the next morning when he woke up still feeling bad (stomach hurt, headache, tired) we knew he need a covid test. We quarantined (although Claire had already left for school.) Her school said it was ok to stay there unless his test came back positive. We didn't get the results until Thursday that week, but by Wednesday Claire and I had symptoms too and of course she didn't' go to school. Thursday we went to get tested, Fielder's positive result came in, and Rob started to have symptoms. FUN TIMES!! The kids were mainly tired (Fielder would sleep over 12 hours at night), they had no appetite and were overall lethargic. Claire stayed in her room 95% of the next week or 2. No one ever had a fever! I started out extremely dizzy. I eventually lost taste and smell, was very nauseous, cough, and stomach problems. Rob was also lethargic, achy, etc. and overall felt horrible. We would take turns of 1 person hanging out with Ollie or helping kids while the other rested upstairs. I remember the worst night I could barely get off the couch and I asked Claire to help get a bowl of cereal for herself and Fielder for their dinner. I had to crawl to clean up where Ollie had puked on the floor and then I had to crawl myself to the bathroom because I was so nauseous. We were barely functioning.
Unfortunately as I started to get a little better, Rob got worse. He noticed from the pulse ox that his oxygen level was too low and checked himself into the ER. As it turned out, he had covid pneumonia and was admitted. The first night he had to stay in the ER because there were no beds. Then he spent another 9 days on the covid unit. He was bored out of his mind, no visitors, nothing to do besides lay there and watch TV or be on his phone. They had him laying prone as much as possible to help his lungs. When he finally was able to come home, he had to stay on oxygen for at least another week (I can't really remember.)
During covid, I have never felt so loved...so many friends offered meals or dropped things off on our porch. My neighbors took amazing care of us, at least from what they could do without any interaction with us!! Even a neighbor that doesn't know us cut our grass. (And then I cut it the following week with Rob's instruction....first time I had ever cut grass!)
After a couple weeks of not eating much at all, we were spoiled with a lot of treats from family and friends!!
A happy memory from these couple weeks was when my friend Shawn stopped by with all kinds of food for us. It was an amazing spread. The kids and I put it all out on the counter and had a feast! We didn't even sit down or get plates, we just stood around the food, laughed and enjoyed feeling well enough to eat! I guess this sounds weird as Rob was still in the hospital - but the good news was that we were never in great fear. It was scary, but the doctors gave us no reason to think he wasn't going to be perfectly fine he just needed oxygen so his lungs could heal. It was however a very emotional time. We had made it a whole year without getting covid. I was a week away from my vaccine (I was going to volunteer at a clinic.) But we still got it....and it was horrible....but we were lucky. I would get very sad thinking about how many thousands of people weren't so lucky and how so many had to say goodbye over the phone.
Somehow we celebrated Easter in the middle of all this. It was the day before Rob came home from the hospital. I really can't recall how the Easter Bunny came up with baskets and candy to hide, but somehow he did. We were out of our quarantine time so the kids could go to the neighborhood egg hunt. Then we had a nice dinner with Mom and Dad in our backyard (food thanks to another neighbor).
