Almost a dozen calls with five health care providers over five hours. Two hours of hold music. Two hours in a hospital. Four days of anxiously checking an online portal for results. And lots of confusion.
After some prodding from my roommate, I called my doctor’s office. Someone took down my symptoms and put me on hold, after which I was told that I should call urgent care to get a test.“Just Google ‘urgent care NYC,’ ” the woman on the phone told me, adding that I could also try CityMD, a local walk-in clinic, because it was doing tests.
The whole time, I was still on hold with NYC Health and Hospitals. After a few more minutes, I got through to someone who also took down my symptoms and demographic information. But this time, I received some concrete information: isolate for 14 days. Ever since I got my result, I’ve had friends — one of whom has an underlying medical condition — also try to get tested, and none have been successful.
After an hour or so, we were escorted to a standard hospital room, which had to be cleaned so thoroughly after each test it could only be used once an hour. A doctor we couldn’t see called us from a separate room to ask about our symptoms and potential exposure. We finished the call, and a few minutes later, she entered the room wearing a hospital gown, gloves and a breathing apparatus.
I notified my workplace, along with everyone I’d had contact with over the last week, and ... that’s about it.