Day 14 - First COVID Test at CCF

(Sorry for the late update... I should have posted this 3 days ago. Too many things have happened!) 

Today is Thursday 23 September 2021.

Today is Day 14 since my diagnosis two Fridays ago and Day 12 since my arrival at this isolation facility (CCF: "Community Care Facility") two Sundays ago.

Yes, today was the day I was waiting for, for such a long time!!

I arrived at this quarantine facility two weeks ago, on Sunday 12 Sep 2021. They didn't do any COVID test on me since then. (They did a blood test on me on 17 Sep, but that is an antibody test to check when I got infected, rather than whether I am positive or not. They did not explain it fully to me, but from my own general knowledge, I know covid antibodies are produced by the body's immune system to fight a covid infection. So when the amount of covid antibodies in my body has reached a certain level, it shows that I have been infected for a certain period of time.)

Today is my first COVID test since I arrived at the CCF.
It is a PCR test. (PCR: Polymerase Chain Reaction)
So it will be more accurate than a ART test, and the swab will go deeper than a ART test. (ART: Antigen Rapid Test)

The staff came to my room to do the test. 
It was 10.40am in the morning.

Ok the swab will go through two nostrils.

The first swab went in. Then the twirl. Ewwww!!! I felt discomfort. (I wouldn't call it pain because the discomfort did not reach the level where I consider "pain" yet). 

This surprised me because the swab seemed to be deeper than the PCR swab I did on 10 September at the clinic where I was tested positive. In fact it felt as deep as the PCR swab i did last year in March at Ng Teng Fong hospital. 

(I only ever did three PCR COVID swab tests in my life, today's was the third one).

And when the swab was removed, the discomfort lingered for a while (it felt as though the swab was still inside my nose). This was the same lingering discomfort I felt for last year's test.

I rested about 10-20 seconds before the next swab in my other nostril. 

Thankfully the swab didn't feel as uncomfortable for my other nostril. But I think for my swab test last year it only went into one nostril, not two.

Ok drama is over. Back to normal life. They said the result will be out in 1-2 days.

As I mentioned, my hopes (for a negative result) weren't very high, since I am still coughing and I still have loss of sense of smell.

My ability to smell food in my meals fluctuates a lot, depending on how strong my food smells. But one thing is constant - I am always able to smell my shampoo every day. The shampoo which my friend gave me (L'Oreal) certainly has a strong smell!
 

For a brief moment I wondered if my loss of smell was caused by the nose swab. But my friend said he was swabbed like 20 times and never had any loss of smell. The same goes for anyone who never got tested positive but got tested many times. How on Earth can my loss of smell be caused by the swab? lol.

There are a lot of conspiracy stuff going on online about how the swabs contain ethylene oxide and how they cause cancer. But it sounds ridiculous to me. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/covid-19-tests-chemical-cancer/