Voice of Real Australia is a regular newsletter from ACM, which has journalists in every state and territory. Sign up here to get it by email, or here to forward it to a friend. Today's was written by Lower Hunter editor Donna Sharpe.
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I took every precaution - limited my outings, wore a face mask, washed and sanitised my hands.
I thought COVID would never get me - but it did and it hit with a vengeance, crippling my family, including my grandchildren - the youngest just 11 months old.
This is a story that needs to be told as we continue to live with the Omicron variant and as many of us continue to become complacent.
Omicron hits hard, hits fast and does not discriminate. It brought me down first and in just one week had latched on to nine of my loved ones - the adults all double-vaxxed.
On Wednesday, January 19 I started to develop a scratchy throat. By Thursday morning my condition had deteriorated and I had a PCR test but kept thinking "surely not - there's no way I would have COVID".
How wrong I was.
My positive result came through later that night. I was floored - gobsmacked that this was actually happening to me. Then the gamut of emotions kicked in.
I felt irresponsible, upset and afraid of how this insidious condition would play out in my body. Then the guilt hit.
My family was exposed.
My daughter and her two children, aged four and 11 months, were visiting from Canberra. My son and his three children aged 10, 5 and 1, had also been in my presence.
They all tested negative however my husband, a diabetic, was not as fortunate. I was terrified he would suffer complications.
Our daughter and her children returned to Canberra all seemed well and they continued to record negative rapid antigen tests but that was all about to change.
My daughter-in-law and three children were the next to test positive, quickly followed by my daughter and her two little girls.
It was like a house of cards - the next two victims were my daughter's partner and my son.
Omicron affected all of us differently but there was one common denominator - fatigue.
My husband and I suffered a sore throat, a temperature, aches and pains, fatigue and towards the end a lack of taste and smell. We spent the best part of a week in bed as Omicron wracked our bodies.
I wondered how we would have felt had we not been vaccinated. I wondered how we would have felt if we had contracted the Delta variant.
What scares us now is learning how some people have been infected for a second time and we now have to wait six weeks before we can receive our booster.
Omicron is stealthy.
When you're out and about never assume you are safe and never assume it will never get you.
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