Last month I had an appointment with my ophthalmologist. His Côte-des-Neiges office was busy and one masked patient was coughing. During my eye exam, I accidentally lowered my mask. My eye doctor’s jumpiness was not reassuring.
After the appointment when I drank a coffee outside a local restaurant I noticed the coffee did not taste like anything at all. Days earlier I couldn’t taste any spice in a spicy chicken sandwich and I couldn’t tell the difference between a chai latte and a pumpkin spice drink.
Walking down the street I spotted the COVID-19 testing site. On impulse I decided to get tested.
The lineup that day included parents and children, young couples, friends, workers young and older. To get tested, everyone had to head to a table next to a mobile trailer where security guards asked you questions and handed you a pen, a clipboard and a form to fill out. It was about 11 degrees Celsius that day and everyone shivered as we inched through the maze-like line towards our destination, the Jewish General Hospital’s COVID-19 testing centre.
It took about three hours for me to get to the front of the line. Three of us were sent to walk across the parking lot where we were instructed to stand on circles on the pavement that kept us from standing too close together. A notice on the door explained what was coming next. Take off your reusable mask – you were going to receive a disposable face mask to wear. Get your I.D. ready. Ring the doorbell and only enter once you’re invited in.
We never had a chance to ring that doorbell. One by one, we were ushered in. I had brought a disposable mask of my own but was asked to remove it and toss it in the garbage. Once inside, I was asked questions I’d answered before, I explained my weird symptoms and the eye doctor’s office and then a series of healthcare workers masked and practically dressed in hazmat suits guided me through a colourful but disturbing hallway. Duck tape on the floor marked where I could walk. “Don’t touch the walls!” I heard over and over again. I was placed in a room by myself and instructed to wait. Then I was brought before a woman who was in a booth shielded by plexiglass. I was asked to show my I.D. and to hold up the form I had filled out earlier in front of the window so that the information I’d filled out could be entered into a computer. I was asked to confirm my details – name, date of birth, address, my parents’ names, my email address.
The funniest thing about this not-very-funny situation was when I was put in a room with three others. We were each in sectioned compartments that resembled open stalls and the way we were lined up, it was as though we were in a police lineup. I thought it was funny that a woman sitting on a chair across the room could look at us all side by side. I joked that she could pick out the culprit. Our nurse was friendly enough, asking us all our stories and who had arrived first. A guy at the other end of the row seemed to have a crush on the young woman standing next to me and kept saying that she’d arrived first. She was behind me in line when we were lined up outside and he was ahead of me in line so I guess he was talking about how he saw her.
The guy needed to use the bathroom and that nearly caused problems because anytime anyone suspected of COVID-19 uses a washroom it has to be disinfected and sometimes they have to call in an orderly for that. If you used a chair, you were instructed to turn it ’round the other way so staff would know it might be contaminated and that it required cleaning.
Once I was called into an examination room, the test didn’t take long but I won’t deny that the last part of it, when they get that swab far up the back of your nose, is painful.
Because I was considered symptomatic, Montreal’s Public Health Department declared that I had COVID-19. I was not allowed to take public transit home. Because I live far away, a taxi ride was out of the question.
I’d forgotten my phone at home so I had to ask the staff to phone my partner. He didn’t know I’d gone for a COVID-19 test and was worried and shocked when he heard the news. A nurse handed me a pamphlet and an information sheet with information about COVID-19 and instructions on what to do next. I held onto those papers as I sat on a bench outside the testing centre waiting for my partner to pick me up.
I took precautions at home until two days later when I received an email with my test results. I was negative and because I no longer had symptoms I was certain I did not need to repeat the test.
What about you? Were you tested? What was your experience with testing?