Reuvers: The COVID era — No, we haven't all been 'in this together'

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As we stand in line for our 11th COVID-19 test, I can’t help but reflect on the last year-and-a-half. We are a family of five, with three school-age children, and while I have tried to maintain optimism throughout the past 18 months, I can’t help but feel discouraged.

Despite the common saying at the beginning of the pandemic that we were all in this together, my personal experience couldn’t be further from that.

Last week, my husband went to a testing centre after our daughter spiked a mild fever. He booked an appointment online and arrived to a very large line. This was nothing compared to the six-hour wait (starting at 6 a.m.) that we did with one of our tests last fall; however it is surprising that we have made little progress in test efficiency and completion. After waiting for 45 minutes, my daughter vomited so my husband left the line to clean her up. Upon returning from the bathroom, my husband was told he would have to go back to the end of the line and potentially wait another two hours. He was so frustrated by the lack of assistance that he left without getting the test completed.

We booked an early appointment for the following day in hopes there would be fewer people waiting and thankfully that was the case. We were told, however, that it would still take 24-to-48 hours for the testing to be completed. What this meant for us was an additional two days of missed
school for her siblings, which included some very difficult behaviour given how upset my other children were to be missing school. The test result was, thankfully, negative, which we suspected since she had a very mild cold. However, those missed days are on top of too many missed days in the last 18 months.

I am a nurse and my husband is a construction foreman, and I feel we have experienced many challenges not always understood by those around us who have flexible work environments. We estimate that my husband lost about $15,000 in income last year due to school shutdowns and days lost self-isolating. In the third lockdown, I reached a breaking point while trying to work full-time as a nursing leader and manage many days with no child care. I took an unpaid leave during the third lockdown and subsequently left my job as an assistant manager in a clinical unit due to the unprecedented stress placed on our family in the months since the pandemic began.

I can’t help but think of other families in similar circumstances. How can two parents work when our kids have been out of school for approximately eight months in the last year-and-a-half (which also doesn’t include another four months of summer care)?

I can’t help but question: where are the rapids tests? Why haven’t we prioritized having children in school as much as possible and created a more efficient process for testing them? Where is the support for families? For mothers like me, who left their job because what was being asked of them was completely impossible?

The combined stress of working on the front lines and trying to care for my family completely broke me emotionally and psychologically and I am only now slowly starting to recover. I don’t think I am alone when I say this past 18 months have been the most challenging of my life. I think of all those of you who may be suffering and want you to know you are not alone.

A week ago, my grade 1 child couldn’t identify a letter in the alphabet despite knowing all her letters and having started to read last winter. Our kids have suffered greatly throughout this pandemic yet we still haven’t identified in-person schooling as being essential to their lives — in particular their mental health and well-being. What are we going to do when a mental health crisis begins for both those on the front lines as well as in the children who have been so greatly impacted?

I think it is now time for all of us to reflect on how we truly can be all in this together.

Emily Reuvers is a wife, mother of three, and a nurse who worked on the front lines throughout 16 months of the pandemic.