Doing the right thing can be frustrating and stressful

Yesterday was a stressful day.   All day I was stressing because my wisdom tooth had to be pulled.  Since the verdict and the continuous pain, I'm afraid of the dentist.  And I'm very skilled at being afraid of something.  Panic with the entire shabang is a competence I master very well. 

But I was equally stressed because of a dilemma and the consequences.   You see, I needed to get my tooth pulled. I am in pain. 

But since previous weekend the children produce snot with large quantities as children can do.  That's ok, snot is not a Covid symptom. On Sunday I had had a headache at my sinusses for a few hours as well. But Jan started complaining a lot about a soar throat on Wednesday and when he still did on Thursday I told him to contact a doctor.  A soar throat is not a common Covid symptom but it is one of them.  He suffered no fatigue, fever, cough or any other symptom but with our infections on the rise quickly, it felt more correct to contact a doctor.  Even though I could somehow predict what would follow and I did not like it. 

And so he did on my request...and as was to be expected: the doctor confirmed it would be unlikely that Jan had caught covid, but yet the protocol is to test for any complaint on respiratory areas to execute a test. And when you execute a test, you should be in quarantaine until the test results are there. That counts for all adults in the household.  And test results don't come in within 24-48h yet.   Up to a freaking 48h!

So being a responsible citizen, reaching out to the doctor for a mild and probable innocent complaint meant indeed that I had to reach out in all honesty to the dentist as well to tell them that we were waiting for a test result.   

Apart from stressing about my irrational fear of suffocating when the dentist would pull out my broken painful wisdom tooth, I started stressing about the cancellation of an appointment knowing the waiting time. I was already waiting for a month now, the pain was increasing. 

Jan could have not gone to the doctor. I could have pretended the quarantaine did not apply to me. I could have not phoned the dentist for advise.  But I felt I had to do the right thing and phone them.  And what I feared happened: they immediately cancelled the appointment, even though I had not received a test myself.  I can't blame them even though they operated "on risk" all the time and should have sufficient protective material I hope.  

I received a new appointment August 10th. I whined about being in pain and on painkillers for another month while being honest and quite likely getting a negative test result any moment now.  The fear of having to wait another month surpassed the fear of actually visiting the dentist. 

The expected thing happened: a bit after the cancellation of my dentist appointment we got confirmation of a negative test result for Jan. We are just suffering from a cold in our family.  And from tooth pain.

But that makes me wonder how our lives will be in autumn and winter when we all suffer from colds, when we retreat indoors with doors and windows closed: we'll have to be all in quarantaine all the time if we are honest. It simply doesn't work if we must wait for test results 24-48 hours. On top of that, then you only get confirmation that in fact you've been contagious 4 days earlier before your complaints so we are acting way too late.   On top of that our contact tracing sucks so we are just waiting for that 2nd waive and a long lockdown to happen without any effective tactics.

I also experienced that being honest and a good responsible citizen sucks.  While it is no excuse, I can see why people would lie or hide the fact they have symptoms. 

But to end on a positive note, the dentist must have pitied me in the end and if Jan had a negative test (he has) I can now go on Wednesday. And the good thing now is that the new appointment feels like a big relief and less like a thread (until Wednesday probably when I can repeat my anxiety).