Katy Gallagher has not been a high-profile federal Labor politician and Senate interrogator for the past three weeks.
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With the Delta strain of COVID-19 in her home infecting her 13-year-old daughter Evie and partner Dave, she has been, in her words, "nurse, doctor, clean, cook, everything".
Senator Gallagher admits she has been scared.
"I feel people try to diminish it in kids. Or try to diminish the illness in kids," she told The Canberra Times.
"You're completely alone. You can't leave the house. No one can come into the house. There is this real sense of it's all up to you to get through this and that's pretty isolating and scary.
"I don't mind admitting it. I was scared a few times throughout the past three weeks."
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The senator's daughter Evie - who turns 14 next week - is now finally recovered after she picked up the virus as one of the first cases of the current ACT outbreak.
Evie's case had been deemed mild enough to be cared for at home, but Senator Gallagher said the reality of "home hospital" was very different, and difficult.
"It's really tough. I feel like bursting into tears every time I talk about it, really. I feel like the whole family has gone through a bit of a traumatic process," she said.
For Evie, there was high fever, lethargy, coughing, stomach symptoms and others "coming and going". On top of that, the teenager was aware of COVID stigma or hysteria.
In home quarantine, the senator kitted up in hastily-arranged full PPE to also care for her family and stop further infection.
Soon she would have her partner to care for as well, but first she was confronted by the situation of non-COVID child, Charlie, in one room and a very ill child in another, unable to give comfort.
It really pisses me off when I hear people go, 'Kids only get a mild illness'. Nobody knows what's going to happen.
- Senator Katy Gallagher
"It's just really, really difficult, particularly when they are at the sickest and when they really need that reassurance," Senator Gallagher said.
"You know that care you would give to your kids when they're sick, all that kind of holding the hand, stroking their hair, making sure their pillows are all good, all that sort of little stuff that you do to help your kids through an illness, none of that is allowed. You can't hug them, you can't hold their hands. You can't, you know? I mean, it's just devastating.
"Watching her in her bed alone - this tiny little thing kind of completely smashed by this virus and be standing across the other side of the room in full PPE, it's a really kind of raw experience to go through."
It was not a smooth ride for the family. Evie had to deal with a secondary infection and Senator Gallagher was now revealing her fully-vaccinated partner Dave also got infected with COVID at the end of the first week.
"So I had two patients in pretty average shape for a few days," she said.
"I was running two different wards in my home hospital, which is essentially what I was running. All of this was designed in a sense, once Dave went down, to keep Charlie safe.
"The doctor said, 'Thank God he got vaccinated' because [Dave] got it reasonably badly.
"He was sick in bed, didn't get out of bed for a week. Day 14 today and he was probably only up and moving around within the last three days.
"So fever, this kind of brain fog that people talk about with COVID, delirium, agitation from the fever, headaches, bad headaches which both he and Evie got, diarrhoea and lethargy like just sleeping non-stop, funny feeling in your chest, all of that."
Senator Gallagher and her son managed to avoid infection. She said they had both tested negative three times in the past 21 days.
The Labor frontbencher has been one of Australia's most high-profile people directly affected by Australia's third wave of COVID.
Senator Gallagher has a unique insight into the controversy surrounding children and COVID. She said people were forgetting, or more precisely did not yet understand, the care aspect of COVID. If Australia opens up, more people will get the virus, she said.
"I wasn't well-equipped, I wasn't prepared and I just learned it on the run," Ms Gallagher said.
"I feel like writing out a list of all the things I needed, and also what else to put in place to help people when this happens. You know, more people are going to get it and more people are going to be running these little home hospitals. That's the reality and there isn't a guide on how to do that."
And she had this warning: "Don't diminish COVID in kids."
"It really pisses me off when I hear people go, 'Kids only get a mild illness'. Nobody knows what's going to happen, frankly," Senator Gallagher said.
"Kids can get the asymptomatic and it's not too much of a bother or they can be symptomatic and be really unwell, which is my experience.