For Christmas, I got a stuffy nose, two COVID tests, and a healthy dose of perspective

For Christmas this year, I got something that was definitely not on my wish list: a stuffy nose.

I could feel it coming on on Christmas Eve. While visions of sugar plums danced in others’ heads, I laid awake fretting about whether my excessively dry mouth and the pressure building in my sinuses meant I was doomed to wake up feeling definitively ill.

It did.

If you’re anything like me — or, I suspect, like most Americans — getting sick on or around Christmas is not an unfamiliar experience. Even pre-COVID-19, it was no mystery why more people got sick in December, when so many of us retreat indoors for social events that feature people shaking hands and hugging and laughing and sneezing all over each other.

But whereas, pre-COVID, getting a stuffy nose at Christmastime would have just bummed me out, this time around, it stressed me out.

In large part, because we have some travel coming up, and because some of that travel involves a visit with my aging parents.

There is obviously no convenient time to contract a potentially deadly virus, but if I were forced to compile a top-10 list of INconvenient times to contract one, the last week of 2021 and the first week of 2022 would run away with the No. 1 spot.

Anyway, on Saturday — Christmas Day — I had a legit stuffy nose. No sore throat, no fever, no coughing. Just a bunch of really annoying nasal congestion.

Although I was stressed out, I honestly wasn’t worried about my health. I’m double-vaxxed and boosted. I figured if it was COVID, the symptoms would stay mild. I also knew it might not even be COVID. The common cold does still exist. The flu, too. And winter allergies, they’re actually a thing, guys.

Oh, and did I mention that because my wife is in health care and I’m really good at looking things up on the internet, I’m basically a doctor?

That’s obviously a joke. This, however, is not: I hadn’t been sick in more than two years.

Unfortunately, the streak ended on Saturday, and that evening I texted the friends who I planned to run with on Sunday morning that I was under the weather and not going to make it.

Upon waking up the next day and realizing I couldn’t just sleep it off, I decided to go get a COVID test.

Here’s how, where Charlotte residents can get tested for COVID-19

As you may know, that is slightly easier said than done right now. The place I’d gone for one last time — Novant GoHealth’s Harrisburg location — had no available appointments. The nearest GoHealth office that could get me in the same day was in Kernersville, and I was not driving to Kernersville unless someone up there intended to sell me a brand-new PlayStation 5 for $50.

I did have some at-home test kits that I bought online a few weeks ago, but those can be nearly as hard to get as PlayStation 5s, and I was saving them for our upcoming family trip; so I resisted the temptation to break them open.

But did I mention that I’m really good at looking things up on the internet? That’s how I found Carolina Pharmacy, which has half a dozen locations scattered around the area, including one in Southend, less than 25 minutes from my house.

My “medical training” (i.e. Google) told me that the PCR tests are more thorough, but in the interest of getting the quickest possible answer, I opted for the antigen.

I arrived a few minutes early for my 6:45 p.m. appointment on Sunday, and got through the line in just over 10 minutes.

Now, waiting for COVID test results is a weird sensation. A friend described it to me as akin to waiting for the results of a pregnancy test, and I think he’s right — though the stakes might be dramatically different, if there are stakes involved with your COVID test (you’re about to travel, you’re about to visit with aging parents, etc.), the suspense indeed might kill you.

Or at the very least cause you to obsess.

Thirty minutes later, after 15 minutes of clicking the back button and clicking the “log in to your patient portal” button over and over and over again, I finally got the option to view my results.

They were negative.

I breathed a little sigh of relief — though I did so through a stuffy nose that turned runny overnight.

The next day, I went through an entire box of Kleenex in about six hours. I also found out, around lunchtime on Monday, that one of the people I was supposed to run with on Sunday morning had developed symptoms and went and tested positive for COVID. I’d seen him six nights earlier, at a holiday party, in a semi-enclosed space.

I woke up again on Tuesday morning feeling about the same.

So on Tuesday afternoon, I went back to Carolina Pharmacy, this time for the PCR test.

I put my odds of being positive at 50-50.

I mean, I’ve known plenty of people who’ve gotten COVID, but this current wave feels a little different. Since I got sick, I’ve heard more reports of people close to me who have gotten COVID than in any other three-day period since the beginning of the pandemic. And in a wider range of areas of the country.

On Sunday, a Charlotte friend tested positive after falling ill while visiting family in Oklahoma. On Monday, my running buddy. On Tuesday, my sister texted from Philadelphia to say her husband and their 20-year-old son both had it.

Yet, for the second time in less than 48 hours, I was negative for COVID.

I woke up Wednesday morning feeling noticeably better. I also felt remarkably blessed.

Blessed to be able to get on a plane and travel soon, so long as I continue to get better and take safety precautions. Blessed to be able to celebrate a late Christmas with my parents, so long as I’m feeling 100% and making choices that minimize their risk. Blessed to be able to say that a stuffy nose and a runny nose are the worst ailments I had to endure in 2021.

Here’s hoping that if you or a member of your family gets sick in the New Year, it too is nothing more than just a cold.