My COVID Test Adventure

Today I have a relatively short To-Do list. I’m also very nervous. It’s this way every year on the day before we leave for Maine. I’m walking on eggshells afraid I’ll throw my back out packing up the car or something. Here’s what Pam wrote down for my To-Do list today:

1. Pay last minute bills.

2. Pack up your work computer.

3. Leave compliant away message on your business phone.

4. Cut grass

5. Pack car

6. Do not throw your back out

Just kidding...she didn’t leave me that list. She didn’t have to. She implies number 6 with her intense stare every time I do anything strenuous the day before we leave.

So, yesterday Pam and I went to Patient First to get our much ballyhooed and dreaded COVID tests. Much has been made of how horribly painful the test is what with a six inch long swab jammed up your nose all the way to your freaking brain where it could be doing God knows what. 

We even heard some moron suggest that he wouldn’t ever get a COVID test because it was all a government plot to implant a micro chip in your brain that makes you vote democrat or some such horses**t. Be that as it may, I was still quite apprehensive as we drove up into the parking lot and saw the little white tent. What made my apprehension even more acute was the fact that my wife was in the car. It’s important to my fragile male ego that I not show any weakness in front of her, so my worst nightmare would be throwing some kind of duck-dying fit in front of her as Nurse Ratchet jabs me with the swab, while Pam comports herself with calm grace by comparison. That’s the sort of performance it might be dang near impossible to live down.

So, the instructions were to remain in our vehicle, and present a picture ID when approached by the nurses in the hazmat gear. When they emerged from the tent, I have to admit to much trepidation. They looked like star fighters with their face shields but the talkative one was all business. She didn’t ask for my ID, she just asked me to blow my nose. Her exact quote was, “remove as much snot as possible.” I would have thought there would have been a more technical term for that like mucus...but she played the snot card. Ok. Then she took my temperature with one of those jabber things you place under your tongue. When she first whipped that baby out I thought I was a goner. What?? It’s made out of metal???!!! Then Nurse Ratchet turns to her assistant, Broomhilda, and says, “These people seem nice, lets not use the long probes on them.” Then she proceeds to place a regular looking Q-tip thing up both of my nostrils, swish it around a little, and she was done. Just like that, it was over. No pain, no discomfort, and no fatally embarrassing meltdown. And, as far as I know, no new found admiration for Karl Marx.

But seriously folks. The COVID test was the biggest nothing burger ever, in this, the Age of Nothing Burgers. So, let not your heart be troubled.