The Aftermath
Friday January 21, 2022
After arriving at Pearson, I took the UP Express and walked home from the station. It was about -8C but calm so not too unpleasant. The next day, Wednesday, I did my COVID test swab and arranged for Purolator to pick it up on Thursday. At 1pm, I duly put the package outside my door and by 2pm, it had been taken. Imagine my surprise and horror then, when a Purolator courier knocked on my door at 4pm to ask where the package for pickup was. Did they not already take it? Was it stolen from outside my door? Several calls to Purolator and the labs over the next two days were fruitless, and the lab ended up sending me a replacement kit. Who the hell steals a COVID test sample from someone's apartment?
By Friday, I had developed classic symptoms of omicron - headache, runny nose, sneezing and coughing. The weekend was the worst, with symptoms lingering onto Monday and Tuesday. The kit arrived on Tuesday and I took the test, again. This time I ordered an Uber driver to pick it up directly and place it into a Purolator dropbox. Surely that would ensure a timely delivery. I checked the shipping tracker on Purolator's website and began to fret when, by the evening, nothing had been updated. I did not want to have another sample lost to the abyss and I did not want to wait for a third kit.
After more calls and emails to Purolator, they assured me that it would have been picked up by 5pm on the same day, but there may have been delays because of the massive snowstorm that hit Toronto. There were no updates to the shipping tracker website because there's been "so many packages" that they just haven't had time to scan them in. The lab also said they had received my sample but again their website had no indication that they had. I just had to be patient.
By Wednesday, my symptoms had cleared up enough for me to be a functional human at work, and by Thursday I was pretty much over it. Thankfully I had no loss of smell or taste. Finally, late on Thursday afternoon, my result came through.
Positive.
Well, at least I have a definitive date of release now, and I don't need to do a third test.
Posted by Jeremy at 2:05am on Friday January 21, 2022 :: 0 comments :: 