Going to Brewer Park to get a COVID test and coming home empty. What happened Friday.

As always, the TL;DR version.

Went to Brewer Park at 11:20am with my son. At 11:40am were given an appointment card to come back at 4:30pm. Came back at 4:27pm. Waited in line outside for 2.5 hours until 7pm. Were then sent home, sans test, because the line was just too big. Got given a new appointment card… for 11am the next day.

Tuesday night, both of my kids came down with what appears to be like every other single cold they’ve ever had in their lives. Understandably, there’s concern that it might be COVID, so neither one of them can go back to school for 14 days OR until they receive a negative COVID test.

Now here’s where we enter into Catch-22 territory. My wife and I both work full-time (and, in all honesty, more than full time). She’s got meetings that can’t be moved, I have meetings that can’t be moved and… oh yeah… I’m also teaching 4 University courses that can’t be moved. So we don’t really have the schedule to look after them at home for 2 weeks, but we also don’t really have the schedule to wait all day for a COVID test.

Until Friday, that is. My meeting schedule was relatively light. Lots of work to do, but I wasn’t tethered to anywhere. So after my last meeting ended a bit before 11, I packed up my 5-year-old son in the jogging stroller and decided we’d take the 25 minute walk to Brewer Park, the big testing location in Ottawa.

Mats is an absolutely awesome kid. Full of energy, non-stop motion, has a smile that lights up a room. He’s also completely non-verbal, on the autism spectrum, and has a variety of sensory difficulties. Mostly (though not wholly) around hypo-sensitivity, causing him to seek out stimulating activities (like putting sand in his mouth, touching everything, not wanting to sit still, etc.)

Trouble siting still. I bet you see where this is going.

Anyhow, we get to Brewer Park around 11:20am, and don’t really have an idea of where we’re supposed to be or how the process works. After flagging someone down, asking if there were any special accommodations for kids with disabilities (there aren’t), we were told we’d have to get in a line and get an appointment card.

Getting the card was relatively smooth. Waited maybe 15 minutes, someone came down, took our information, and told us to come back at 4:30. We were told we’d wait “a few minutes” outside, then get inside, and wait an additional 90 minutes. So arrive at 4:30, leave at 6:30 or so. Not too shabby!

We walk home, then at 4pm walk back to Brewer, and get in line at 4:37pm.

After about 20 minutes, I knew we were in trouble. The line was barely moving. At all. One fun thing was there were a couple of people dressed up in big inflatable dinosaur costumes, entertaining the kids. Mats seemed to quite enjoy them. But by 5:30pm, they were done for the day, not to be seen again.

The line eventually got into a tent, which was actually colder than waiting outside. All of the wind, but none of the sun. Kids were (understandably) running around, some without masks. Parents were (understandably) running after them, occasionally without masks as well. I began to wonder if we were in the line to contract COVID, rather than be tested for it.

Mats was clearly uncomfortable. I mean, he would be at the best of times, but it was also starting to get chilly and he has a cold and his nose was running like a faucet. I got out my phone, went to YouTube, put on a Peppa Pig video and gave it to him. It worked better than I expected.

A bit before 7pm, a rumour starting floating down the line that we wouldn’t be seen at all — the backlog was just too long. I didn’t want to believe it, but just doing some mental math, I knew it was likely the case. Given the pace the line was moving, we likely wouldn’t be in until 7:45 at the earliest. It’s a 90 minute wait inside, and the centre closes at 8:30. The math simply wasn’t in our favour.

Sure, enough, at 6:58pm, we were told, despite waiting 2.5 hours in the cold, appointment card in hand, we wouldn’t be seen that night. They took our appointment card from us, and gave us a new one for 11am the next day.

So here we are. CHEO (who is running the kids’ portion of testing at Brewer) hasn’t announced this new appointment card system, nor have they posted any signage anywhere, so parents were lining up at 4:30am this morning to get in, only to be told several hours later that they’d have to come back at 11:30.

This is a complete gongshow. Kids are going to get colds at school, and if you require kids with colds to get COVID tests (which is a sensible thing to do), then it should be obvious that the demand for tests was going to surge once the schools re-opened. But it literally didn’t occur to anyone in any kind of position of authority in this city or province.

So now I’ve got to decide whether or not I take my 5-year-old son, who is not feeling well, to go wait outside for several more hours in the cold.