MY son’s Covid-19 battle
IT’S hard to describe the feeling as anything other than terrifying. This is how I felt as my three-year-old Covid-positive child was taken away in an ambulance last September.
My son had received a positive test result a little more than 24 hours earlier and in that time had changed dramatically from an excitable, energetic little guy with a dry cough to being lethargic, feverish with an untreatable headache, and increasingly shallow breathing. Having heard and read so much about debilitating symptoms and rising death tolls caused by this virus over the past 18 months, it was hard not to worry.
The week before, his dad and I had kept him home from daycare as new positive Covid cases in NSW remained well over 1000 each day. Being fivemonths pregnant with our second child, and having recovered from pneumonia earlier in the year, I didn’t want to risk contracting the virus.
But working from home with a toddler proved difficult, so we sent him back to daycare for two days to get ahead, the plan being I would then take the rest of the week off to look after him with the hopes that case numbers would decline.
In those two days, a child at the daycare had infected an educator who had then infected my son, as well as other children on the campus. We began notifying everyone we had been in contact with and started 14 days of isolation, only to learn we would have to isolate for an extra 14 days as per regulations. It was only by a stroke of luck, my son’s dad and I received our second Pfizer vaccine the same week and, over the 28 days, we continued to test negative.
Our son woke at 2am the morning after his diagnosis. He sat upright in bed, wide awake and complaining of a headache. His temperature was above 38C and he was telling wild, nonsensical stories. He was delirious, clearly not himself and stayed awake for hours, drinking half a bottle of apple juice and devouring food.
In the morning, he had extreme bursts of energy and was unusually angry. By lunchtime, he was lethargic, hot and complaining again of a headache. His fever rose to above 39C and the headache intensified. Paracetamol did nothing to help and he insisted we hold an icepack on his head – if he moved, he screamed out in pain. We kept him calm and still for a few hours, waiting for the call we were told would come from the children’s hospital. It was an intense and scary wait.
The call finally came that night after he had fallen asleep. This is when his breathing grew shallower. After listening over a loudspeaker, the doctor sent an ambulance to take him to hospital. We were told when Covid gets in the lungs, patients can deteriorate quickly so we shouldn’t take any chances.
Only one parent was allowed to accompany him to the hospital, so I stayed home.
After a few hours, he was able to come home. His recovery took time and even weeks later, his lungs were still struggling with a deep, chesty cough.
We don’t know what – if any – the long-term effects of this virus will be for our son, but knowing of children developing multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) after having Covid has me constantly on edge and astute to symptoms.
Through this I have learned that vaccinations work and I am grateful my partner and I had both our shots before being exposed. I just wish we could have protected our son from going through what he did.
Covid is here to stay and while lockdowns and isolations have worked to slow the spread, the mental and physical toll on individuals is huge – it’s time we learned to live with the virus.
With children from the age of five now eligible for the vaccine, we have the opportunity to protect them while also limiting the spread to the vulnerable in our communities.