Greg Bruce: What a Covid test can tell you about yourself, besides the obvious

Covid testing: More than just two people and a swab, says Greg Bruce. Photo / Alex Burton

The first account of a Covid test I came across was early in the pandemic, where a magazine writer, presumably struggling for stories in lockdown, gussied up her personal experience into something that was more dramatic and interesting on the page than it was in reality, about how testing is deeply invasive and hurts for days afterwards: the sort of exaggeration one might make in order to generate interest from an editor when there's a shortage of things to write about.

My first test took place a few months later. I had cold symptoms and I was excited to feel part of the team of 5 million, doing something more meaningful than not leaving my house. My feelings about the testing process at that time were still comprised mostly of urban myth, along the lines of the story mentioned above. I tipped my head back, as the doctor requested, and he slid the stick an illogically long way up my nose. When it hit what I presume was my brain, I jumped involuntarily. The whole encounter felt dramatic, presumably born of the novelty of the times. I tested negative.

My second test was just over a month ago, after I had become infected with what I assume was RSV, which was, at the time, the only virus the country was worried about. I went to the doctor only because Zanna was furious that I had spent so long wandering around the house sighing and leaking sputum, with no sign of respite. The doctor was a paediatrician, gentle-voiced and nurturing. My sickness, at its worst, had been no more than a cough, sinus pain, some snot and generalised lethargy, but when I told him about my symptoms, he said, "I'm really sorry to hear that," and commiserated so sincerely about this illness, for which I'd been getting less than no sympathy at home, that I briefly wondered if I was a very brave little soldier. He explained that we were going to make a plan and get me well. I found myself wishing this man had been my childhood doctor instead of the witty and acerbic Dr Anderson, who once noted - correctly - in front of my mother, that I got sick only on days when there were one-day cricket internationals on television.

Immediately before my test, the paediatrician said, "A little bit of wasabi!" which struck me as a great line, recontextualising an unpleasant necessity into something a bit fun and exciting. It felt like a classic psychological trick, no doubt proven in some subsequently debunked study. This was my favourite Covid testing experience. I tested negative.

Nine days ago, two days after the start of the current lockdown, my 6-year-old daughter got sick with a fever and sore throat. When we told her she would need to be tested for Covid, she didn't take it well. It was more or less all she talked about for the rest of the day. Before bed that night, she said, "I'm getting a Covid test in the morning and I'm not excited about it."

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At 3am, she woke up and blew her nose for 15 minutes, then lay awake ruminating for an hour. She woke again at 5 for another hour of rumination. When she heard her older sister get up at 6am, she said, "I know the first thing Tallulah is going to say when I get up."
"What?" I asked.
"'You're going to get a Covid test this morning'."
I know her sister and I knew she was right.

Two hours later, while reading the news, I discovered that, nine days earlier, I had been at a location of interest. I called Healthline. The recorded message said, "There are 162 people ahead of you in the queue", then predicted a wait time that was out by roughly 45 minutes. At the end of the call, Zanna said "You're not self-isolating. No way. I won't allow it."

I called my GP, and made an appointment for a test for Clara and me that morning. The GP arrived promptly at our car and performed my test first, spiralling the stick elegantly up my nostril. I tried not to wince, for Clara's sake, but failed. When he put the stick up her nose, she didn't complain and nor did she react, even when he left it hanging there for several seconds. He asked if she was okay, and she said, "Yes," but very quietly. When he removed the swab, he told her she had done well and I told her she was very brave. She looked at me silently, with red, wet eyes, and that single look caused me more pain than all four of my Covid tests combined.
"Are you okay?" I said.
"It hurts," she said.

A Covid test is intended to be a non-creative enterprise: scientific, consistent and repeatable. My tests have all taken place out the same window of the same car, in the same car park, at the same medical centre, by people wearing the same face shields and disposable blue smocks. But experience is not repeatable and humanity is not consistent. People on both sides of the car window necessarily bring themselves to their interactions, and those selves are always more than potential carriers of disease, or the first line of defence against it, especially in times like these.

On Tuesday, I returned - alone this time - to the GP for my mandatory day-12 test. The doctor came out to the car, handed me a tissue and two pages of information I will never read, then jammed the stick up my nose so ferociously it bowed in the middle. He spun it thrice, and withdrew his sample, along, I assume, with my adenoids. You could argue that it hurt, but all pain is relative.

Later that night, my result, and Clara's, came back negative.