Unfortunately, I am guilty of actually feeling just a bit smug after two years of escaping the life altering hug of COVID. My husband and I dodged a few bullets throughout the two-plus years as we watched friends and family fall prey to various symptoms caused by the illness. I just kept thinking how thankful and lucky we were that we had not contracted COVID. I’m not sure whether I said that out loud and forgot to knock on wood but on a bright sunny day a month ago, my husband started coughing and had a headache. I told him that he should take a home test just to rule out a positive result. Of course, I really didn’t think it would be positive since we had made it this far. When the test wait time was up, there were two lines that told us that whatever we had planned in the next two weeks probably wasn’t going to happen. As the day went on, he developed a headache and went to bed for most of three days. Retirement is mostly about being together 24/7 but really, quarantining again? How many more homemade tortillas can we make? We have spices and herbs that we will probably never use again as we constantly tried new recipes last year while stuck at home. Needless to say, I felt fine until three days after my husband’s positive test when I suddenly developed a sore throat and the feeling of a head cold coming on. Oh boy, here we go I said to myself. Yep, I joined the crowd and tested positive. I didn’t feel bad enough to sleep all day but did have one night of coughing all night and then just felt tired for several days. So, what do I do when my mind wants to conquer the world but my body just says let’s watch Netflix until we fall asleep? Yep, I watched Netflix until I fell asleep. We made it through a total of two weeks until we got our energy back and tested negative. Most people don’t tell anyone that they have had COVID but I want to share our experience and let people know that at 70 and 69, we did survive it. At times we were a bit grouchy with each other and when entering the house we sometimes went in different directions. It helped greatly when family and friends brought us whatever we needed so we never went without. I’m sure we had “deer in the headlights” eyes when they dropped things at the back door. We always yelled a few words out to them so that we didn’t feel so much like lone captives on Gilligan’s Island. Gratefully, we aren’t going to divorce court, we are still speaking and things are back to normal. Looking back, I can honestly say that I would not have spent those quarantine days with anyone else. We survived and once again life goes on!

Tina Jensen is a member and one of the coordinators of activities for the Escalon Senior Fun Bunch. She contributes a monthly column for The Times.