Merry Sickmas!

I hope everyone had a nice holiday season and that you were able to spend some time celebrating and appreciating this wonderful time of year.  

Unfortunately for us, my family had an illness run through the house and disrupt a lot of our holiday plans. I know we aren’t the first and we certainly won’t be the last to have our holidays or family gatherings impacted by colds, flus, Covid, etc, but it definitely wasn’t fun! 

I’ll start by saying we probably won’t ever know who was “patient zero” in the house, but Axy did start the week before Christmas, Monday the 19th, with a cold. It was bad enough that she stayed home for the day but felt okay enough to go the rest of the holiday-shortened week. Meanwhile, everyone else in the house felt fine for the rest of the week, but I just had the feeling that if Axy was sick on Monday, it was just a matter of time before it made its way through to the rest of us. And my glass half-empty outlook was that it would happen just in time to potentially spoil Christmas and boy was I right! 

I woke up unintentionally early on Friday morning at 3:30am because my throat was that sore – that was only a sign of things to come. Initially I thought, “Okay, no big deal. I’ve been sick before, I’ll be sick again, I just have to power through and hopefully feel better in a couple of days.” Then Amy started to feel sick Friday night/Saturday morning but thought the same thing, just a cold. 

We’ve had plenty of instances over the last couple of years that when a cold or sickness felt more severe, we would take one of the at-home Covid tests just to be sure. We’ve never had a positive test result and assumed this time would be no different, so we didn’t even bother testing until Saturday night when I said, “my taste buds must be messed up because of my sore throat and how congested I am”. Ava said “uhh, if you can’t taste certain things, you need to take a Covid test.” And boom! I was the first positive result in our house, quickly followed by Amy, also on Saturday, and then Ava the day after Christmas. Luckily, Axy and Ainsley never tested positive. 

I felt pretty fatigued on Friday and Saturday, but it wasn’t that much worse than a bad cold or the flu that hit our house a few years ago too. The absolute worst part for me was the lack of taste that lasted about 3 days. For someone that LOVES to eat, it was very surreal to be chewing food knowing what it should taste like and getting zero feedback from my tastebuds. All I could “taste” was texture. The upside was I wasn’t overeating or indulging as much because if I couldn’t taste it, why waste the calories! But don’t worry, I made up for it as soon as I could taste again :-)

And thank goodness for modern technology and delivery services. While we were stuck at home the entire week between Christmas and New Year’s, we were able to place a few orders for groceries and other necessities through Walmart, Amazon and Giant to keep us stocked – thank you delivery drivers! 

Investment Advice offered through Great Valley Advisor Group, a Registered Investment Advisor. Great Valley Advisor Group and Haas Financial Group are separate entities. This is not intended to be used as tax or legal advice. Please consult a tax or legal professional for specific information and advice. 

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