A mother is rejoining her husband and daughters after being the only one to test positive for COVID-19 in her family.

“I moved into the basement,” shares Blumenort resident Carly Mitchell. “I spent five days down there without my two young girls.”

Mitchell says her four-year-old had a difficult time trying to understand why her mom ‘couldn’t come up the stairs and give her hugs and kisses’.

“Every morning she was yelling down the stairs to see if I was awake and constantly wanting me to sit and chat with her, and do what we could to feel connected.”

Mitchell says about two weeks ago her symptoms warranted testing and so she and her family went to get tested together.  The results showed that she had tested positive for COVID while the others tested negative.

“Public Health was thinking either a false negative because apparently that can happen and is more common than a false positive,” explains Mitchell, “or that they coincidentally might have just had a common cold at the same time that I happened to be sick with COVID.”

The matter was made a little more unnerving as Mitchell is pregnant with their third child. “My obstetrician’s office is actually following pregnant women who test positive with COVID,” shares Mitchell, “they will follow up with me at birth and after birth and do some testing both for me and the baby, so they have that information.”

The study is observational and Mitchell says it will essentially be following her diagnosis and pregnancy history to see if there are any ill effects as a result of the virus.

Mitchell considers herself and family lucky as they are healthy and outside of the age group that is more susceptible. “We did quite well having it, and we did quite well having it in the household,” she says, “but there are a lot of other people that you need to think about and worry about.”

Admitting to not knowing what this means going forward, Mitchell expounds on some of her uncertainty. “There are so many unknowns, like, if this is ever going to be truly over because if it is like a cold or the flu, it may be with us and it might just be about finding out how to move forward with it being a part of our lives.”

Mitchell says despite her daughters not being able to go out for Halloween, they were “spoiled rotten” by members of the community who came by to wave at them through the window and drop off some treats.