Last week I was sick. No fever, but I had a sore throat, cough, headache, and a few other things that are all on the “vid” symptom list.

As most know by now our daughter is 5, and currently attending kindergarten in-person at a school that has gone the extra mile to keep the kids and faculty safe.

An attendance, which I’ve recently and somewhat ironically found, lowers my level of acceptable risk in many situations as I have a vested interest in keeping her going; mainly because it makes her SO happy after all these months of things being taken away, and she truly thrives in the environment.

So last week when I presented with these symptoms I found myself surprisingly stressed at the decision we were now faced with… do I say anything?

I mean I don’t have a fever right? Isn’t that the defining thing that makes the difference? Or is it? A simple cold, allergies, and/or irritation from a weekend of moving furniture around and kicking up dust could all be potential culprits of my now-burning throat.

Or, it could be covid. The vid.

I could be sending my kid to school as a potential super-spreader, which is a pretty crappy thank you to the teachers and staff working hard every day, not to mention irresponsible for the other parents and families. I could be allowing my husband to unknowingly go to work, same story. These days you just don’t know, and being responsible for the socio-economic effects of my getting others sick is a large burden to shoulder.

And in working all of this out it became very clear to me that the system we currently have in-place DOES NOT WORK, because there is little to no incentive to self-report symptoms.

Let me demonstrate what I mean:

I had two, and if you think about it, only two, options.

First path, I say nothing.

My kid continues to go to school, my husband continues to go to his job, and no one’s lives are disrupted because in reality, I probably just have a sore throat. I worry that I should say something if I’m going to be around my parents, who are in a higher risk category… hmmmm should I maybe just say something to them and have them not hang around for a week or two, and keep silent to everyone else? To all the parents on the block? To the school?

This is definitely the path of least resistance; I wouldn’t have to be “that person worried about covid” and potentially labeled as being scared when in blunt reality, I’m not. But if I say something and the test comes back negative then what am I, just the girl who cried wolf?

But wait, every store has these signs with lists of symptoms and instructions to not enter if you have them, and I have them… well crap now what? Lie? Pretend everything is fine, maybe avoid talking at stores and to my neighbors for a few days? Hiding my 13-yr-old-boy-sore-throat-puberty-voice would be challenging, but I guess it’s all a matter of what one can live with.

Or, second path. I say something.

In initial discussions with my significant other whilst trying to figure out what to do, the idea of just testing silently and then not saying anything if it was negative very briefly came up– but was dismissed out of hand when I realized the scenario of it’s being positive and then everyone around me knowing I sat on that info for the two+ days it takes to get the test back (not to mention the much bigger health risk there).

Two days of my daughter going to school (they wear masks, but still) and playing in the neighborhood, and him going to his job, and also interacting with the world myself. That option absolutely did not check out on the moral compass; it didn’t even make the playing field.

Now we’re left with either I get the test and we go all in, or I don’t. So the second path goes, and went, something like this:

I call the school and say I’m picking up my little, because I am realizing I’m sick and should go get a test (and morally can’t keep her there knowing this). Drive to pick her up then drive out to the testing place where they assess my symptoms and deem it necessary for me to have one. I’ve also now coordinated with my husband to telework (thankfully he has that option for a limited time, and his boss is understanding of the situation).

After getting hard testing sticks painfully shoved up my nose, which made me think wow, if I didn’t have a headache before I definitely have one now, my daughter and I then proceed home where I contact the school to see what work we need to do. I then also send a message to the people on the block, some of whom I’d seen a few days before and some who’s kids had very recently played with my own.

And I feel like a jerk. I don’t want to cause anyone any extra stress or work.

It does need to be noted here though that my feelings of jerkiness were mostly self-imposed; my husband, the school, and my incredible group of neighbors were supportive of the decision.

Ok all that’s done, and now we wait. The world stops for two days.

My kid is enjoying sleeping in, but also trying to internally process the stress of suddenly being pulled home again and not going anywhere or seeing anyone; we can tell (no matter how much we talk with her about it) that she’s scared this will snowball into a repeat of March where everything was constantly changing and basically, getting taken away from her day-by-day.

We are a mostly single-income family, which was a conscious decision on our part during these younger years of our daughter’s life, and a secondary result of moving so much with my husband’s job. Luckily in his line of work he’s paid salary, which made the second testing option outlined above possible.

But that got me thinking… what if he wasn’t?

The “solution” in our country right now, if anyone has any symptoms that could easily be caused by something else like allergies, is to tell people they need to do the right thing by voluntarily stopping their lives, not going to jobs, to school, not earning, shutting off from friends and family, all to wait for a test to come back.

My test was negative.

We told everyone I was just regular ol’ sick, laughed about it, and the world resumed. We lost two days of school (that we don’t get reimbursed for), two potential days of earnings had my spouse not been salary or able to switch to virtual so quickly, and with him working from home -yes that’s still work that takes time as everyone working virtually knows- I was still doing schoolwork and the things you do with a 5-yr-old, sick, all the while hoping I didn’t get her sick.*

All, just waiting for a test to come back.

This wasn’t even the 14-potential days of aftermath if it had been positive, this was just waiting for a test to come back because it was the right thing to do.

So let me pause here for a moment to be clear, because right now I probably sound relatively callous to the many people who have physically suffered or lost their lives to this virus. I’m bringing this up because I feel the exact opposite and this needs to be talked about. Hear me out.

My family are mask-wearers, and believe in them. We wipe down toys, we rarely go out and when we do it’s as safe as we can, we wash hands. Our kid sanitizes her hands in the car immediately after school, and then takes a shower when she gets home. We have parents and family who are either high-risk or immunocompromised and we want to keep them safe, and have either taken or supported every measure to do so.

So what I really want to highlight through this small experience above is that, if you change one small thing in my scenario like not being paid salary, or even Halloween -the ONE thing my daughter has really been looking forward to- falling within that potential 14-day quarantine window…. would I have gone to get a test?

Or would have I have gone with option one, “just this once,” because the decision was potentially fiscally and mentally healthier for my family after this year.

(Even that last line is a screw, because it wouldn’t have been mentally healthier for me, to lie to my friends and the school, but I also would have lost my damn mind after all this if I’d had to have told her Halloween was canceled. FML.)

In short, IF we want people to willingly choose to do the right thing and self-identify when sick, we NEED to start incentivizing it. In March, when this was new; it was easy to step up and do whatever the right thing for the time was. It made us feel good, like we were coming together and working toward a common goal.

But now, we’re tired. We’re worn down. We’re done.

Tired of the feeling of being tired, of living every day with a weighted scale in our hands and every decision balancing on it. If I do this can I see my parents? If I do that can my kid stay in school? Should I be helping my kid with virtual school or focusing on my own work so I can put food on the table, comma, for my kid?

Tired, that doing the right thing these days almost always demands large sacrifices on our part with very little personal return on investment.

If we WANT to keep people safe, which I whole-heartedly do, we NEED to find another solution besides what happened in the myopic example I’ve shared, because currently there is little to no incentive to do the right thing as that action seems to rarely line up with the best thing– fiscally, emotionally, mentally, everything else -ly, for our lives.

This misalignment is a massive recipe for disaster, because it means less and less people are going to choose the right thing when presented with the option. Which means more and more people are going to be at risk, and I’m hoping you’re seeing where this is going now… Big Ben, Parliament.

In essence, bringing this up will not only save lives, but allow us to find a solution for people to live too. Health is not just a physical state, and if we ignore the mental, social, emotional, and spiritual side of it for too long we are not healthy. Alive maybe, but not healthy.

Said another way, ignoring mental health IS life-threatening. Ignoring emotional health IS life threatening… It’s ok to focus on only one of these aspects for a short time, but we suffer when that focus is long-term.

I hate putting problem sets into the universe without a proposed solution, but step one is that we start a dialogue on this. That the system is NOT working. That we need to actively start figuring something else out.

The country can’t go on hold because of this election; let’s be honest it’ll be a while before it’s resolved anyway. So vote, go make your voice be heard, and then let us shift our focus back to figuring out this rubik’s cube of a challenge.

Helping people SHOULD NOT be a partisan issue; we are all Americans and right now some of our fellow citizens, our friends, our family, our loved ones, are being saddled with impossible choices. No one should have to choose between keeping food on the table and a roof over their head -or- keeping their loved ones, friends, and other citizens physically safe.

But this is WHERE WE ARE NOW.

This decision is happening RIGHT NOW to someone, this very minute.

Get me now?

Let’s all come together, place the politics and blame aside, put on our adulting hats, and figure this shit the fuck out. Let’s find a way to make this right thing just a little easier, so we can start living again.

*This is the part where I really have to highlight how incredibly well my husband juggled work and childcare responsibilities those days we were waiting for the test results and I was sick. He’s pretty amazing, and not just in an “amazing for a husband” kind of a way, like a really amazing overall person kind of way.