Though the coronavirus was ubiquitous, I was a sceptic. I did not believe in the virus despite the 24 x 7 coverage. I remember telling a friend that though Delhi was teeming with cases, I did not personally know anyone who had got the disease. Perhaps the corona deity heard this and my ‘lack of faith’ invited the visitation.
My husband and I did take all precautions though. We dutifully tried to ‘build’ our immunity with Septilin, turmeric, lemonade, zinc and Vitamin C and D. We washed our hands like Lady Macbeth. Masks, disposable gloves and sanitisers were always by our side. I had even bought an oximeter, which pegged our oxygen saturation levels at 99 per cent. It felt like we were taking part in a pantomime, that somehow it wasn’t real.
That changed one fine Sunday afternoon when my husband came home after a shopping chore drenched in sweat and announced that he wasn’t feeling well. He said he was isolating in the spare bedroom. My heart sank because I knew that if he was positive, I was sure to follow. The next day, I checked our temperatures and we both had fever along with sore throat. My husband is 65 and I am 60, so we definitely fall in the high-risk category.
I had read enough horror stories of long waits for results, overburdened hospitals and crematoriums. The next few days passed in a blur of persistent headaches, 102-degree fever and nausea. We booked an appointment at Dr Dang’s drive-in facility in south Delhi the next day though we knew that we would test positive as we had most of the classic symptoms and were terribly fatigued. We got the confirmatory email by the evening.
The next few days were a blur of tremendous fatigue and headaches. But fear was the most debilitating. Social media was full of horror stories of long waits for test results, hospital beds and funeral pyres—experiences I consumed with fascinated terror. I couldn’t stop myself from surfing the net to understand what was happening despite the overwhelming nausea, diarrhoea and fever. However, the strange and wonderful thing about the pain is that it didn’t leave an imprint on my memory. Writing this a few weeks later, I can’t quite remember how it felt.
My biggest learning from the experience was to appreciate our much-maligned bureaucracy. Perhaps they have learnt from their handling of the pandemic for many months now, but unlike the stories of sickness and isolation I was reading on the net, we had the best treatment. From the day our test results came, we had a whole team at our disposal. The next morning, we got a call from a cheerful, garrulous volunteer, who confirmed our details and came home bearing a packet of vitamin C, zinc and an oximeter (The one I had bought on Amazon turned out to be fake, for even an inserted pencil showed an oxygen saturation of 99 per cent).The police officials stuck a notice on our gate informing everyone that this was a ‘COVID-19+ home’. The A4-sized proclamation, my sister-in-law told me later, kept away the hawkers who perennially blocked our gate under the shade of a neem tree. Next, a voice on the phone introduced herself as a doctor and said she would guide us through this period of home isolation. She informed us that we could ask for an online psychologist to talk to us anytime during the day. She also shared dietary advice on consuming greens and proteins. We got a call from the sanitation department, which disinfected our premises and sent a person wrapped in PPE to collect our garbage in designated yellow plastic bags.
The various officious voices from the Delhi administration sometimes felt intrusive, especially if we were asleep (which was almost always). But we would also look forward to their calls to announce our vital statistics—pulse, temperature and oxygen saturation. After 10-odd days of constant monitoring, we were told that we were “discharged”, but had to continue self-assessing our symptoms in home isolation for another week. By this time, our friends and family had also stopped asking us how we were feeling as we were on the mend. As I rattled out the routine vital statistics for the last time, I almost felt separation anxiety, for I had begun to appreciate the bureaucracy. The final week, I think the voice on the other end sensed it too, for she wished me a great weekend ahead, saying “Aapki voice bahut sweet hai (Your voice is very sweet).”