I was at a bit of a loss as to how to name this post.

Some contenders: “A Tale of (a lot more than) 2 COVID Tests”, “An Absurd Tale of COVID Testing in Oregon”, “What I Gotta Do to Get on an Airplane??”, “COVID Testing Before Travel: A Tale of Woe”, “How to Unsuccessfully Exit the USA”…and so on and so on. You get the idea.

We made it home to Ukraine, but the events leading up to our departure were anything but straightforward. They were more poke-your-eye-out type events that involved me crying on the phone to Walgreens pharmacist on more than one occasion. Face palm. Not my finest hour.

A couple weeks before we were scheduled to fly from Oregon to Ukraine we got an email from our airline that stated the Netherlands was requiring COVID testing in order to transit through their airport. Me, being naive about COVID testing in Oregon thought “Hey, no big deal. We’ll figure that out the week we leave.”

The week of our departure arrived and I started looking around for where we could get tested to fulfill Amsterdam’s requirements. They required the test be a PCR test, conducted within 72 hours of arrival in Amsterdam, and the results in hard copy had to be presented before boarding at your initial departure point. Welp, after much digging, and doing rapid testing that was the wrong test altogether (BTW, try doing 8 self-administered tests in a 15 passenger van at a Walgreens Drive-Thru. I dare you. It’s like a fun exercise in team work….or something like that), we came to realize that Amsterdam’s requirements were basically impossible for us to fulfill. No one anywhere could guarantee that quick of a turnaround for PCR testing. We are a family of 9- we couldn’t risk failure. We had to know that we were going to be allowed to board and not be turned away.

So, we had to contact the airline and ask them to reroute us through a different country with more lenient COVID requirements. They rebooked us to fly through France the next week. France accepted rapid tests and they only had to be conducted within 72 hours of departure. That we could do. Although, I think France has now changed their requirements and are now more strict. We got out right in time!

We were scheduled to fly on a Friday morning. I had done my research and found an acceptable rapid testing site in a nearby town and booked us some appointments for Thursday morning. We arrived at the clinic to do the tests, got all the paperwork filled out, and then they dropped the bomb that unfortunately they would not be able to test us that day because our insurance didn’t cover the rapid test. “Oh, that’s okay” I said, “We’ll pay out of pocket. We have to have these tests done since we leave TOMORROW, so we don’t really have a choice. If we have to pay, we have to pay.”

They then proceeded to tell us they couldn’t accept cash from us since we were insured. What??? I’m offering you cash. Please just take it and stick a swab up my nose. Nope. They wouldn’t do it. No way were they going to test us. We were going to have to find somewhere else. Well, I hate to break it to you, but finding another place that would do 7 rapid tests that same day was an impossible task.

Jed and I sat on the phone for hours calling every single clinic we could find and no one would test us. We drove all around town to different clinics and begged in person. We called clinics 3 hours away! We were desperate. I was crying. Kids were crying. At one point Hava blurted out “I just want to go home and eat some borscht!!” It was ugly. It’s not that we were so desperate to leave our family and friends, it’s just that we’d been living out of suitcases for weeks and we had already delayed our return home by a week and we were just done. The stress of saying goodbye to family and friends is hard enough. It’s worse when it drags on and on and on. Plus, we knew Max and Morgan, the new house parents for the duplex, were arriving in Ukraine soon and we didn’t want them to arrive without us there to greet them. Ugh. It was such an emotion fest! The last week of our time in the US is always a little ugly anyway. This just took it to a whole new level. 🙂

Finally, after a couple hours of sitting in parking lots making unsuccessful phone calls, Jed called it quits. There was nothing more we could do. We were just going to have to rebook our flights again. My face hurt from crying and the kids were all hungry, bordering on hangry. We decided to head back to the grandparents’ house to regroup and figure out a new plan.

Then our miracle came. I pulled up to my parents’ driveway and my dad met us there. He had made a ton of phone calls and was able to track down a nurse practitioner friend who works at an urgent care clinic. In fact, that day was her first day working at the urgent care clinic where he found her. She spoke with her office manager and they told us if we could get there in an hour, they could test us. All of us. You better believe we were back on the road within minutes. It was an absolute miracle! I can’t even tell you the relief we felt. We were going home!

The biggest bonus to all of that craziness, was that Max and Morgan ended up flying home to Ukraine with us. They had also been scheduled to fly through Amsterdam, but realized they weren’t able to fulfill the requirements. So, we met up at LAX and flew the rest of the way home to Ukraine together. It was just perfect.

Traveling internationally during this crazy time in history is not for the faint of heart. I think I’m content to just stay home in my little village for a while. The days of COVID test acronyms, insurance policy numbers, health declaration forms, and googling “COVID testing near me” are behind us. We’ll just sit tight in the middle of nowhere Ukraine, thank you very much. 🙂