Our year of 2021 began with lots of hope!
There were a lot of challenges we were about to face coming in to the new year, and we would need our hope to get us through. Luckily, as I’m typing this at the end of 2021, I can say that things did eventually get better for us. We did not lose hope, (although I admit it was waning during the roughest patches).
I’m gonna have the boys write the rest of this post because all I can remember about January is how Jeremy got Covid. The boys remember the pictures better than I do.
This is Tanner speaking. We went to the dog beach with Uncle Matt, Aunt Johanna and her parents. We played with the dogs. It was fun. Then we went to their house to play a virtual reality video game. It was cool. After that, we went outside with David (Johanna’s dad) and played with the drone. It was also cool.
Here, we are making 3 kings for Three Kings Day on Jan 6. We made them out of toilet paper rolls. That night we put out our shoes for the wise men (kings) to come by at night and give us a gift. They gave us each a hair brush and “king” size Kit Kat candy bars.
Dad made us a yummy meal that had every color of the rainbow.
We had a playdate with Owen and Jude at our house. It was the first time we had friends in the house since Feb of 2020. We wore our masks and played with the drums, legos, and outside. Mom reminded me we did this because we weren’t going to normal school. (It was still closed for everybody).
We had to do homeschool work. I’m writing.
Dallin is doing Minecraft math.
We kept Dad company a lot while he did his work at home. This is like his 5th spot in the house for his desk.
Tanner (me) is showing people Fort TOD.
This is a cool way that we store the bricks when we aren’t using them.
This is how I sweep the fort sometimes.
This is our enchanting table when we just started it. We put cool rocks that we find there and eggneliticefungitucefruce (our name for a thing that grows on trees and has the skin of an apple and inside it looks like a hardened sponge).
This is where we would collect long grasses to degrade into dirt and wrap them into bundles and build teepees out of them.
We got to play with our friends at the park near their house. We did football, basketball, hockey and baseball.
We spent a Sunday afternoon on the beach, just the four of us. Normal church was closed. My mom wants to add- it sucked not being able to go to normal church!
I (Dallin) wrote this letter to dad: Dear Dad, Plese let me ethr go ice skating or golf. -Dallin
Dad said he would let me, but everything was closed so we never really went.
We built a model rocket that we got for xmas. It looked cool.
Mom started teaching a new class in the park called Music Mappers.
This is Dallin with the scarf that Grandma Nana made him for xmas. He asked her for it and loved it.
Dad got sick with COVID. While he was making dinner, he told us his test results came back and he said that he tested positive. I (Tanner) was surprised and bummed. Now we had to stay quarantined for two weeks!!
His symptom were tiredness, grogginess, coughing (a little bit, kind of), and low fever for 9 days. I helped take care of him, sort of, kind of, a lot, maybe. I helped make his breakfast. I did his chores. It was boring. I also had to do most of mom’s chores too because she was still hurting from her back problems from Nov and Dec (disc herniation). Also, I couldn’t play with Owen and that was sad.
Dallin helped by laying out Dad’s clothes so he could put them on easier. We also had people from church and the neighborhood bring us food. So that was nice.
Here is a post that Mom made on Facebook about Dad getting Covid:
My husband had Covid.
Fortunately, it was a mild case. Since the media doesn’t seem to share much about mild cases, I’d like to share some things about our experience.
So here’s our story, for what its worth!
His Symptoms
Jeremy felt really tired and had a fever come on quickly (it was 100-101 for the first 12 hours, then 99.6 for 8-9 days.) During this time, his main symptom was fatigue. He got a bit of a groggy cough for one day and a bad headache another day. We are feeling very blessed by his mild case. Our doctors said mild symptoms is what most of their patients with Covid are experiencing.
While it wasnt nearly as bad as we expected, it still wasnt fun. Jeremy got really tired very easily. That was probably the “toughest” thing for him. He felt fine most of the time and wanted to keep busy, but when he’d start doing something like a chore or a short walk, he felt like he had just ran a couple miles.
All in all, it was really not a problem. I’ve seen him in much more pain and strife with strep throat and the flu.
Getting Healthy
To combat the virus, Jeremy drank lots of water and ate healthy food that I made for him. I gave him lots of elderberry syrup and Vit D and zinc, multiple times a day. (Did you know that loss of taste and smell is a result of low levels of zinc? Our ND clued us into that. Google it.) He didnt lose taste or smell. He took Tylenol when that one-day headache came on. And he basically slept as much as he could.
Speaking of tylenol, that was unfortunately the main thing doctors told Jeremy to take, even though his fever was mostly 99.6 and he wasnt in any pain. I had wished they would have promoted and discussed healthy eating and supplements.
Isolation from Jeremy
We did not separate from Jeremy or do anything differently around him. And somehow, I did not get Covid. I had NO symptoms!! I tested negative 3 times over the course of 13 days. Our boys age 7 and 9 also tested negative and had no symptoms.
Apparently, it’s common for just one member of the household to get the virus. This is very different from what we’ve heard over the last 10 months online. 
The doctors went through their little script on how we should use a separate bathroom and not sleep in the same bed if we can, but they said it’s not mandatory to do so and it’s not gauranteed that I would get sick with Covid. And when tests kept saying I dont have it, they were not surprised. We had several friends across the country tell us the same thing happened to them–only one person in their home had it. Huh.
The doctors went through their little script on how we should use a separate bathroom and not sleep in the same bed if we can, but they said it’s not mandatory to do so and it’s not gauranteed that I would get sick with Covid. And when tests kept saying I dont have it, they were not surprised. We had several friends across the country tell us the same thing happened to them–only one person in their home had it. Huh.Contact Tracing
This was interesting. Doctors wanted us to trace back 5 days, but the county health department asked us to trace back 14 days. We were really surprised by this huge difference. Thanks to google maps, Jeremy could tell them exactly where he was every minute for the last 7 years, so he didnt have to do any guesswork.
Both the doctor and county officials were consistent with their definition of “exposure”: being within 6 feet of another person for more than 15 minutes. They were only concerned with people Jeremy was with, NOT people that I or the boys were with. This surprised me a lot.
I fully expected the doctors and county to interrogate me about who I’ve been teaching music to. Ya know, since there’s concern that students give the virus to teachers and teachers can take it home to others. And all the hype about being with someone who was with someone else that ended up having it. The response we got from both the doctors and county was “Oh, well, possible exposure is only between the individual who tested positive and anyone that was within 6 feet of him for 15 min or more. Was your husband within 6 feet of any of your students?” No, he isn’t even present at the lessons. “Alright, so that means they did not expose him and he did not expose the students.”
So… WHY is this a huge source of concern around reopening schools?! 
(Btw, I was assured that I’m using all the correct mitigations in my music studio to protect my students. I already knew that, but if felt good to hear officials affirm it. 
)
)Back to tracing–the only places Jeremy had exposure within the previous 5 days was at home with me and our kids and at the grocery store. Within the previous 14 days, he was at the grocery store, running other errands, his workplace, and our brother’s house, but exposure by the real definition was only at the grocery store and our brother’s house. The county officials did not seem to care about the grocery shopping trips or the family visit, which seemed odd because we confessed that our family visit didnt involve masks. Instead, they were very concerned about the small businesses that Jeremy went to (bike repairs and take-out meals). They asked for addresses and exact time stamps and how many people he encountered. This seemed really unfair to those small businesses.
The doctors said it is likely Jeremy caught Covid at the grocery store, although it’s hard to be sure. The county recorder disagreed, because “there isnt a place on our form to ask or record about grocery store visits, so I dont think that’s considered a very likely place for transmission.” 
Okay…lets just pause here.
Okay…lets just pause here.I’m not saying grocery stores need to shut down or have more restrictions, because the world already tried that and it was a nightmare. But if people creating forms and collecting data on transmission are literally ignoring grocery stores as an obvious place for transmission, then I think we’re going to keep running in circles with all this. 
Quarantine
Turns out, quarantine length varies based on the severity of your symptoms. Check the latest CDC guidance. Even when you have the virus, your quarantine does not have to be 14 days. Our Doctors told Jeremy that if he is feeling better by day 10 and he is fever free for 24 hours, he can end quarantine. Sure enough, the CDC matched this guideline. I was told that if I test negative after day 5 of exposure and continue to stay symptom free, I can end my quarantine as early as 7 days. Sure enough, theres a whole entire bit about this on the CDC website too.
This was such great news!!! I wish more people were familar with this guideline because it would relieve a lot of undue burden that people face with employment, socialization, schooling, etc.
Our family quarantined for 12+ days, which was longer than our doctor’s recommendation. We felt like we played it extra safe on the length and how we quarantined. We did not go anywhere except walks and a drive-thru trip to Jack in the Box. We did not even go to the grocery store to get essentials, which the county officials said I could do if I kept the grocery trip short. 
Mental Health
Unfortunately, our quarantine took a very negative toll on our mental health, esp for our kids. Just like when the original shutdowns happened back in march, the kids were more anxious, moody, clingy, misbehaved, etc. And I was, too. For this reason alone, I would not recommend a 14 day quarantine unless your doctor says you must.
To help with the monotony, we went on a lot of walks, watched movies, and baked. We also made an at-home museum for one of our school projects, which was all about our senses and turned out to be really fun!
Testing after Covid
Another less-known fact is that once you have Covid, you’re most likely to test a false positive for weeks and months after you’re not contagious and dont have Covid anymore. Our doctor advised AGAINST Jeremy testing at the end of his quarantine. She said it creates unnecessary worry. She said it’s interesting that employers and schools require a negative test to return because the results often give a false positive and doctors have to write a letter explainging they are not contagious or sick anymore. So we learned that testing is not the best indication that you’re not contagious anymore. It might be a good thing for people in charge of things to be aware of this!
Jeremy decided to test anyway, and I guess he was lucky because it came back negative, which we were told is rare.
Lessons learned
The biggest take-away from this whole experience is that most of us are very MISINFORMED about Covid. Whether you’re high or low risk, whether you’re an employer or a neighbor, whether you work in medicine, politics or just a musician trying to make peace with the world–you should keep yourself updated on what the CDC actually says about Covid exposure and quarantine. Chances are, your perspective of what should be done is not acurate. It was quite a journey those 2-3 weeks realizing how wrong a lot of us are aboit what exposure is and what quarantine needs to be. If you’re in a position to make decisions for a workplace or school, please follow the CDC instead of creating your own standard and definitions for exposure, quarantine and testing.
What Made the Difference
A special thank you to the neighbors, friends and family that helped us during all this.
If you want to help someone with Covid in a meaningful way, here’s the best things people did for our family:
– kept calm when we said Jeremy has Covid
– left yummy food at our doorstep
– entertained our kids on video calls
– texted to check on us
– prayed for us
– grocery shopped for us
– welcomed us back to in-person activites as soon as our quarantine was over.
We took Dad on a walk after like a week of him being sick because he was tired of being in the house. He got really winded by the walk. Mom and Dad sat down while me and Dallin rode our bikes on the path. That’s when Dallin fell. He was riding, and because of erosion, there was an empty stream in teh middle of the track. Hi wheel got caught in the stream, twisted and he fell. I ran back to tell mom and dad, but they didn’t believe me because I was laughing. I was laughing because it was weird that he fell. That made me mad. I said, if you don’t believe me then he’ll just suffer.
This is a weird picture of Dallin’s shoulder that got scraped. I didn’t think it was that bad. It was a very very minor cut, but we made a big deal of it.
This is his leg that got scraped.
This is us running to the bike.
We had to get COVID tested because Dad had Covid. I got a negative result, but I had all the same symptoms as Dad for two days. Dallin was negative. Mom tested three times during quarantine and was negative every time. I hate getting tested, but it’s not so bad.
For homeschool, we learned about our senses. For our final project, Mom had the idea to make a museum about what we learned and we can have Dad come visit it. We liked this idea since none of us could go to a real museum.
Here’s the check in counter. We charged real money.
It was a Museum of the Senses, covering the Auditory sense, Olfactory sense and Visual sense. In each exhibit we put a diagram of that part of the body, a 3D model that we made with 3D pens, and an activity to help teach about it. Dallin made the Auditory one. I made the Visual one. The eyeball I made looked really cool. Mom did the Olfactory one.
We also had a museum cafe where we ate dinner.
Another day in the life of homeschool…
Johanna and Matt stopped by at the tail end of Dad having Covid.
We can’t remember why they were here.
Somehow Mom got ketchup on her nose during dinner one night.
One morning, it was cold enough for the boys to see their breath. They were really excited about that.
The zoo reopened!! We were there the first day they had things back up and running. We met up with the Hoffmeister family and had a fun time with them around the zoo!
Mom and Dad went on a date. They went and walked around Balboa Park. We were babysat by Owen’s parents.
Mom made something called Books by the Batch. This is one of the batches.