I got the call on a Tuesday that my COVID-19 test came back positive, and my mind raced to two places: my kids and my heart.
My kids because I feared they, too, were infected. (How could they not be? I work from home, they school from home. Laughing, singing cheek-to-cheek dance parties are standard in our kitchen.)
My heart because I already have a heart condition brought on by a virus. I had viral meningitis in 2011 and, a cardiologist surmised, my body sent fluid to my organs to protect them. The sac of fluid near my heart never reabsorbed, so I live with a pericardial effusion that has neither shrunk nor grown in the past 9 years. It’s a minor inconvenience, but a nagging reminder that viruses can do unexpected, lasting damage to your organs.
The positive test was a shock. We’ve avoided crowds and restaurants and we always wear masks when we leave the house. My daughter and I got tested together because we planned to host three of her friends from school for a birthday celebration, on the condition that her friends got tested and we got tested. Neither of us had symptoms.
Her test came back negative, but I worried it was false — that her viral load hadn’t reached a detectable level yet. I assumed my son, who was getting tested the next day, would also be positive. I assumed my husband, who was tested the day after my daughter and I were, was also infected.
But those tests, and two subsequent rounds, were all negative.
So I isolated in a spare bedroom, donning a mask and covering my hands in newspaper bags when I needed to emerge. My symptoms grew a little worse each day. My whole body ached. My head throbbed and my eyeballs pulsated. I would lose my train of thought mid-sentence and forget simple words.
“This virus can hang out in my brain for a while,” I texted a friend. “As long as it stays clear of my heart.”
I ordered a pulse oximeter to keep an eye on my heart rate and oxygen levels, and I took comfort in their steady levels.
I waffled between gratitude that my symptoms weren’t worse and fear that they would become so any moment. I felt newly determined to protect my kids from experiencing this thing I now had a taste of, and powerless to live up to that task. I felt guilty that they were downstairs, already navigating their eighth month of life without the comforts of in-person school and favorite sports and easy contact with friends, and now doing so without my help.
Nine days after my positive test, the symptoms started to lift. Someone from the Chicago Department of Public Health called to ask how I was feeling and help me contact trace. She said I was cleared to come out of isolation on day 10. To be safe, she said, I should get re-tested 14 days after my initial positive test to make sure I was truly clear of the virus.
The morning I was scheduled to be sprung, I woke up feeling the worst I’d yet felt. My headache was severe. I was too dizzy to sit upright. I spent the day lying flat.
I WOKE UP the following day feeling worse. I couldn’t stand or walk without leaning my back against the wall and inching my way toward the bathroom. I called my primary care physician, who directed me to the emergency room.
After an initial triage and electrocardiogram, I was given a blood test for COVID-19 markers. One protein that doctors check for is troponin, which tells them the virus has damaged your heart. My troponin levels were more than three times the healthy limit. They checked again in a few hours to see if they’d gone down. They’d gone up. COVID-19, the ER doctor explained, goes wherever your blood vessels go. And your blood vessels, of course, go everywhere.
