Being Tested

Note: Usually the stuff I post here is devotional writing. This isn't. I just feel like posting it. And, hey, it's my blog, so I can do that if I want.

I didn’t need a test.

I’m careful. I stay six feet away from people and I use hand sanitizer like it’s going out of style.

Still … as an essential worker, out and about in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, I’m around people. I could endanger someone’s life by passing on this little virus that’s made such a big stir.

If I’m a carrier, it’s probably better to know, I admitted reluctantly.

Nervous about sounding ignorant, I called my doctor’s office, not sure what to ask.

In no time, I was transferred to a reassuring voice and scheduled for a coronavirus test.

The next afternoon, as instructed, I pulled up to the orange cones in the parking lot of Thunder Bay Community Health Service in Atlanta, the nose of my car facing an unpretentious black-and-white tent.

As instructed, I stayed in the car and waited my turn.

The nurse who came out to talk to me looked tired beneath her face shield and mask. Business had been non-stop all day, all week, she said. Her ears were sore from the mask’s elastic. Still, she was cheerful and kind as she explained what would happen.

It wouldn’t feel great, she said honestly.

Through the car window she handed me a paper mask covered in pastel flowers and didn’t laugh when I wasn’t sure how to put it on.

I wasn’t experiencing symptoms of COVID-19, the sickness caused by the coronavirus, but, if I did, I shouldn’t take ibuprofen, she said. Studies have shown it can make symptoms worse. Good to know.

There’s evidence that heat helps fight the virus, which lodges in the back of the throat -- so, she said, hot drinks work in your favor. Coffee, hot tea, or, she suggested, hot cocoa are on your side. OK by me.

She led me toward the enclosed tent, really a pop-up gazebo more suited for a wedding or family picnic than a medical center parking lot, with one black wall to protect patient privacy. I headed to the drawn-back makeshift doorway, feeling as though I’d suddenly stepped into a rerun of M*A*S*H.

Inside, there was mostly open space on parking lot cement, with the very notable exception of the big box in the middle of the tent.

Simply constructed of fresh-looking 2-by-4s and plywood, about 8 feet tall and 3 feet deep, the box was open in the back with a wall of Plexiglas in the front and a slightly-raised platform where the tired-but-kind nurse stood, holding an oversized cotton swab.

A wall of transparent acrylic between us, the nurse, in her open-backed box, put her gloved hands through two rubber-sleeved openings in the clear wall, much as though she was a scientist testing an unknown and potentially dangerous substance -- and I was the experiment.

As gently as she could, she inserted the cotton swab up one of my nostrils.

She had been right.

It didn’t feel great.

My brain couldn’t decide whether to shriek or giggle as the swab fished around in regions of my head that don’t usually receive that kind of attention. The process was mercifully quick, and I was given a moment to turn my head and cough into my mask, my sinus cavity still buzzing confusedly.

It was a two-sided test, and I had to gather my courage to offer my other nostril for probing. The nurse didn’t tell me if she used the same end of the cotton swab as in the first go-round, and I didn’t ask.

It seemed too quick, like there ought to be more to a test that was checking for a virus that has killed more than 50,000 people in the U.S. That was it, though, the nurse said, sliding the swab into a tiny tube. My sinus mucus would be shipped off to a testing facility, and results would be back in 48 hours.

I walked back to my car, head still gently protesting the invasion of its personal space, feeling like something had changed.

There are so many unknowns right now. Uncertainty has become the norm. And, to be honest, I’d gotten comfortable with not knowing, not with any certainty, whether I had been exposed to the virus that has been violently overturning the tables of almost every aspect of our lives.

In some ways, it’s easier to not know.

If you don’t know, you can lean on the incongruous comfort of uncertainty.

If you don’t know, you can hold fear at bay.

But, in little Atlanta, there’s a weary nurse who is spending her days sticking sticks up people’s noses because knowing makes a difference.

Facts can save lives.

In a day or two, the phone will ring, and I’ll know that I’m carrying the virus, or I’ll know that I’m not.

Either way, scary though it is, uncomfortable as I may become, it’s better to know than to not know.

Of that, I’m certain.

First published in The Alpena News on April 25, 2020