How Cue Health helped my family manage those ‘we were exposed’ moments

More than two years into pandemic parenting, the time we spent in complete lockdown simultaneously feels like it just happened and like it was a distant memory. For many months after that, my family took baby steps back into the social world—until we finally got back to something that resembles “normal.”

But the challenge is that we are still pandemic parenting, just while our kids are back in classrooms, sports games are back on the calendar and fewer jobs are remote. As a result, even with the precautions we continue to take, we’ve received several post-interaction text messages informing us that we were exposed to Covid-19. 

For the longest time, I felt so much anxiety when I got those “you were exposed” text messages. I wondered where we could get tested. I wondered how long test results would take. I wondered whether we would have clear results even if we didn’t have symptoms yet.

That’s why, for me, one of the biggest breakthroughs for managing pandemic parenting life was discovering Cue Health, which offers a Covid-19 self-test that is 97.8% as accurate as lab-based PCR tests and can be conveniently done at home. (Based on an independent study conducted by Mayo Clinic.)

Cue eliminates those questions about testing and turnaround times that gave me anxiety for too long. With fast, reliable results anywhere we are, Cue helps my family get the answers we need to take care of our health and the health of people around us. 

Not to mention how convenient it is to take a Cue Covid-19 test: After downloading the app and setting up your account, you start the test by putting a Cue Cartridge into the Cue Reader. Then you use the individually packaged wands, which are safe for adults or kids ages 2 and up (with swabbing help from an adult), to swab. After nasal swabbing, you insert the wand into a warmed-up Cartridge in the Reader—no fluid mixing or anything necessary. Twenty minutes later, the test results are delivered to your Cue Health App. Compared to the time in 2020 when there was a full week-long wait for our test results, this is a complete game-changer.

By this point, my kids are no stranger to nasal swabs and it was almost always a struggle to get a great sample from my 4-year-old. Thankfully, with the Cue test, you get reliable results from swabbing the lower part of each nostril. That means no more of the “probing your brain” feeling that caused so many wrestling matches. 

Especially as the mom of a child with asthma, it’s vital to get accurate, reliable Covid-19 test results. When it comes to his treatment and care, that early detection is power. As a nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT), the Cue test is highly sensitive, which means it is great for detecting even small amounts of the virus if the exposure was recent. Yes, even all known variants! 

That’s a big deal when you consider that the vast majority of self-tests for Covid-19 are antigen tests, which are more likely to give you a false negative and do a poor job of picking up on virus load among asymptomatic people. In fact, the Cue test is so much more reliable than antigen tests that it meets most requirements for air travel in the United States and Canada. (And, since it’s super portable, you really can take it on the go.)

As the trusted at-home testing technology for organizations ranging from the Mayo Clinic to Major League Baseball, Cue Health has played a significant role in getting our society back to normal. That is why I’m so grateful that it’s accessible on an individual level in a way that reliable Covid-19 self-tests really weren’t for too long. And with a Cue+ membership, you can receive even more access to high-quality health care—including 24/7 access to chat with board-certified physicians, e-prescriptions and renewals and more. 

With the accurate tests and suite of helpful resources, Cue Health helped me manage the stress I felt about potential exposures. Although life may never be the same as it was pre-2020, we are headed in the right direction with tools like those from Cue Health that help us manage Covid-19. 

Shop here and save 20% on your Cue Health Starter Pack for a limited time with the code MOTHERLY.

*Valid on the starter pack which includes 10 COVID-19 tests and a Cue Reader. Not valid on other products or memberships. No additional discounts. Limit 1 transaction per customer. No cash value. Expires 9/12/22.For product disclaimers, visit cuehealth.com/docs.