I'm a doctor who tried to plan an extremely safe Thanksgiving for 3 people. It wasn't worth the scare it put us through.

- Dr. Robin Schoenthaler has been a longtime radiation oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
- She and her two sons recently got together for what they hoped was a quick, science-based "as-safe-as-we-can-make-it"
Thanksgiving dinner. - A couple of days later, one of her sons tested positive for
COVID-19 . - "Was it worth all the 4 a.m. wake-ups, the test-result anxiety, the constant texting each other to check on symptoms while living through that first week of absolute uncertainty?" she writes.
- She wants others to learn from her family's experience and cancel their holiday plans.
I'm a physician in Boston, and I've been obsessed with the coronavirus
My sons - Mackenzie, 24, and Cooper, 21 - live nearby and have been what I call "COVID-conscious" since the start. Both kids work and study from their apartments, have small friend pods, have excellent COVID-19 hygiene, particularly with me and anyone who falls into a high-risk group, and both had stayed mostly bubbled at home the previous two weeks.
We decided we could have an 'as-safe-as-we-can-make-it' Thanksgiving
Because of this, we agreed to have a science-based "as-safe-as-we-can-make-it" Thanksgiving following all the techniques I had researched.
In fact, we were masked except when actively putting food in our mouths, pulling our masks back up into place between servings and when chatting during the meal.
It all went perfectly.But then on Saturday morning, while I was walking with a friend, Kenzie texted me saying, "Sooooo, I have bad
'Why, why, why didn't we just skip Thanksgiving this year?'
All I could think was, "Why, why, why didn't we just skip Thanksgiving this year? And now it's too late to stop whatever tsunami is coming our way."
The rest of Kenzie's texts confirmed my fears: He was sick with a fever, body aches, and a headache. He had lost his sense of smell and taste. He tested positive for COVID-19 later that day.This is exactly how COVID-19 spreads: A person, like my beloved son, can have it, be contagious, but have no symptoms at all, not a single clue, for several days before getting sick.
This is why we were so meticulously careful about our Thanksgiving. We knew it was possible one of us could be that asymptomatic contagious person - not likely, not even probable. Kenzie has five friends in his bubble. All had been tested the week before for travel and were negative. All have been tested since and stayed negative, and all were asymptomatic. He had shopped, carefully, at only a couple of large stores.

And as it turned out, the precautions we did have in place worked. Cooper and I are COVID-19 negative. And Kenzie had a rough week but is getting better. We're all getting better.
Read more: After a Boston architecture firm reopened its office, workers came back voluntarily - and every employee said they felt safe. Here's what worked, and the problems it's still trying to fix.But was gathering my little family together for some pumpkin pie worth it?
Was it worth it to have Kenzie feel immense guilt about potentially exposing us? Was it worth the discomfort of having to tell his contacts they needed to be tested and then go into 10 days of quarantine?
Was it worth all the 4 a.m. wake-ups, the test-result anxiety, the constant texting each other to check on symptoms while living through that first week of absolute uncertainty about how things would turn out? Am I ever going to hold another Thanksgiving in the middle of a pandemic? Absolutely not.And Christmas in 2020?
No possible way. Not a bit. Not a chance.
Dr. Robin Schoenthaler has been a longtime radiation oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. She's also a writer, storyteller, and an obsessed student of epidemics.This story originally appeared on Schoenthaler's Facebook page and on The Boston Globe website. It has been republished with permission.
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