‘You feel pretty awful’: Sydney family’s experience falling ill with Covid

Like many families around Sydney, the McGloins spent the past 10 days contracting or recovering from Covid. This is what it was like.

The McGloin family from Sydney’s Sutherland Shire did everything that was asked of them. They wore masks, they got vaccinated and even did rapid antigen tests before lunch on Christmas Day.

Mum Elissa said they were given the all clear on the tests but she could see her husband Richard go from healthy to sick very quickly.

“The test did come back negative but by the end of the night you could tell he was just getting sicker and sicker,” she said.

By the day after Boxing Day, she herself felt she had a headache and had cold chills through the night.

“I felt terrible and said ‘I am taking another rapid test’ and it was positive. And then the whole family just came down with it,” she said.

The McGloin family in isolation at home in Sylvania, Elissa and Richard with their children from left Mitchell, 16, Adalyn, 12, and Ashton, 14. Picture: Jonathan Ng

They are now on the mend but will be confined to their house in Sylvania Waters until January 6 because they delayed getting tested because they were too sick to wait six hours in line for a PCR test.

“The worst part was the fatigue, everything else was manageable — the fever was manageable, the headache persisted for about 24 hours but it subsided,” she said.

“The sneezing and the coughing was just like a cold.”

She was so fatigued while going to check on her children who were sick in bed she had to lie down between visiting each child’s bedroom to recover her strength.

“My 16-year-old was really sick, my 12-year-old (Adalyn) was more asymptomatic because the next day she was eating and watching TV while the rest of us struggled to watch a screen for a couple of days … You feel pretty awful.”

Her 14-year-old son Ashton was sick for three days as was husband Richard, while her 16-year-old Mitchell had the virus like her for about six days in total.

They now feel fine except for occasional feelings of fatigue and Ms McGloin has lost her sense of taste and smell, which is coming back if she blows her nose “really hard”.

“We did everything right, we always wore masks, we got our vaccinations, the fact that it came our way is just bad luck,” she said.

Originally published as ‘You feel pretty awful’: Sydney family’s experience falling ill with Covid