Our Christmas in iso after daughter’s positive test confirmed the worst

Christmas morning this year for our family began with a question from father to child: “Have you got your test back yet?”

Merry Christmas? That came later. A distinctly secondary consideration compared with whether NSW Health had sent out the results of their COVID tests.

On Christmas Eve, one of my 19-year-old daughter’s best friends sent a text. “I’ve tested positive to COVID.” The friend has been working in a bar in Darling Harbour and had dropped in to watch a movie at our house on Wednesday.

A rapid antigen test delivered bad news on Christmas Eve.

I did worry about whether that was a COVID risk now that Omicron has made Sydney its new home. But given my daughter herself has been working as a waitress in a restaurant in Enmore, I thought it only slightly lifted the risk. And these kids have missed out on so much over the last two years, I didn’t have the heart to object.

Thanks to the determination of my husband, who pounced whenever a chemist or supermarket had a new supply, (plus an income that can cover the $50-a-pop cost), we have a stash of rapid antigen tests. We have been testing regularly so that we might be able to go to my parents’ house for Christmas in good conscience.

When the text arrived, Grace took out one from the medicine cabinet and tested herself. Two lines. Positive. Even knowing how likely that was, it was a shock. A sobering one. Christmas would be very different this year.

Instead of making eggnog, which is her favourite thing to do at Christmas, Grace and her father (who has had a booster shot) began trying to find a testing clinic still open. They made it to the RPA clinic with 20 minutes to spare until closing time. It was a three-hour wait. But we are so grateful to the people who were staffing it on the night before Christmas and to those in the labs too. We figure they are being stretched.

So now we are in iso. We passed our daughter’s presents to her through a barely opened bedroom door and watched her unwrap them via Facetime.

The good thing about being in iso at Christmas is that you have lots of food. The Channel Nine Christmas ham (thank you, Mr Sneesby). An enormous side of beef that was meant for family Christmas lunch. Mangoes. The downside is you have presents for extended family that will be cluttering up the house for some weeks yet. Not just obstacles, but a reminder of another much anticipated family event cancelled by COVID (along with the 18th birthday).

So far, my husband and I have tested negative. But this is a small house. There is no separate bathroom. We are depending heavily on our vaccines to protect us and to help our daughter fight her infection, assuming the RAT is confirmed. The gift of modern science. That’s all I want for Christmas.

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