Stay Home Part 2

  STAY HOME! Part 2

A couple weeks ago, I told you about the rotten cruise we had at the beginning of this November.  I told you about the Hurricane that came rumbling up toward the ship, how the ship fled north toward Baltimore, how we missed two great ports we were supposed to visit, how the Hurricane ruined the food and wine on the cruise and the entertainment we dreamt of seeing on it.

But I didn’t tell you about my COVID.

Three days into the cruise, my nose started running.  At first I thought I was just having a temporary allergic reaction to the pillows in our stateroom, but my running nose got worse.  It kept running constantly, and then I developed a cough, constant headaches, and body pain, and I started sneezing constantly.

My wife Linda finally said, “Maybe you have COVID.”

I said, “No way.” I reminded her that we had both just received our third COVID booster and tested negative before getting on the ship and that we had had a bad case of COVID at the beginning of the year that probably created a lot of anti-COVID antibodies in us.  

She wouldn’t listen, and so we both took a COVID test in our stateroom. Hers was negative.  Mine was of course positive. I had COVID.  

I did what any responsible passenger would do.  I picked up my stateroom phone and called the ship’s medical team.  We expected a quick and forceful response from them.  I was wrong.

The nurse I spoke to said he wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do but that he would get back in touch with me after he asked around.  Then he hung up.

I looked at my wife.  We were both surprised by the nurse’s apparent confusion.

After about an hour, there was a knock on our stateroom door and a doctor came in.  She was wearing a mask and carrying a bag of medical supplies.  I expected her to give me another COVID test, but she didn’t.  Instead, she took my temperature and my blood pressure, and she handed me some cough drops for my sore throat and some pills to control my runny nose.  She also told me that I was quarantined in my room until the end of the cruise.  

My wife said, “What about me?”  

The doctor told her she wasn’t quarantined. She was free to wander around the ship and enjoy herself.  

“But shouldn’t I be quarantined?” my wife asked. “ I’m sharing a room with a person who’s got COVID.  Aren’t you afraid I’ll contaminate people on the ship?”

The doctor shook her head and said, “It’s entirely up to you.”

My wife and I felt this was a strange and rather frivolous response.  The medical team was ignoring the possibility that I had infected my wife and that she might infect other passengers.  

The doctor assumed that since my wife tested negative she was negative. In fact, my wife took a test when we got back home and she tested positive for COVID.

I guess the moral of all this is that people who should be taking COVID seriously aren’t and that the responsibility falls back on people like you and me to protect ourselves and others.

So remember to stay home!

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I wrote this column for the Dziennik Zwiazkowy, the oldest Polish newspaper in America.