My experience with Covid

PAAVANI BISHNOI
Industrial Designer, Gurugram

In mid-January my husband had to go for a mandatory Covid test which turned out to be positive. It was imperative that I too get a test done even though none of us had any symptoms. I was rather super energetic and confident that my test would come negative, but the moment I got the test result, I crumbled. A fear set in. I immediately felt weak and unwell. I had heard that people lose their sense of taste and smell but I didn’t. I just stopped eating properly, perhaps out of fear, which was the biggest mistake I made.

Soon, I felt weak, started having fever, and then on the eighth day my oxygen level went down to around 87%. My husband wanted me to get hospitalised but I was terrified. It is not like I have a hospital phobia. Yet, the fear of Covid was so strong that I did not want to go to the hospital. The experience at the hospital was bizarre. I was the only patient on the entire floor. The nursing staff, the doctors and everybody else would always be in the full-body PPE kits and looked like walking robots so that you could not recognize any of them. You did not know who you were talking to.

The experience at the hospital was bizarre. I was the only patient on the entire floor. The nursing staff, the doctors and everybody else would always be in the full-body PPE kits and looked like walking robots so that you could not recognise any of them. You did not know who you were talking to.

The nursing staff were totally new and inexperienced as they had just joined as nurses in the absence of other work opportunities. There was no female staff so I was worried about the usual things women worry about in such secluded spaces. Things got worse when they shifted me to an ICU ward with a cancer patient. It made me even more uncomfortable. They had to sanitise the floor and convert it back into a general ward, so they shifted me to the ICU.

One day for three hours they forgot to put me on oxygen. In the Covid ward, the staff rarely treat you nicely, so you feel like an untouchable. Food and medicine are delivered from a distance. I had a hard time trusting the medicine they gave me.

Sometimes they forgot to put me on oxygen, other times they forgot to regulate the oxygen level. It was only when I was shifted to the general ward that I felt comfortable as the staff was nicer. When we get sick, we mostly worry about finding the right doctor but I would say it is the nursing staff that make the real difference.

Meanwhile, my husband and children were all quarantined; so, we couldn’t meet. But the positive outcome was that my children, seven-year-old twins, became self-disciplined, learned to set their own plate and eat their food. They also didn’t miss any of their online classes when I was away.

Above all, my husband overnight learnt to do all the housework.

SHASHANT SHETTY
Business Consultant and Avid Traveller, Mumbai

I tested COVID positive last month when everything was opening up and life was getting back to normal. It is ironic that from November 2020 to February 2021, I was traveling across India but I did not get the virus. I got it back home, within three or four days of joining the gym, which is just ten minutes walking distance from my residence.

My first symptom was body ache and weakness, which I thought was because of the exercises, but it was of a different kind. On the fourth day, I had a mild fever but no cough. I was still not sure that it was Covid but I immediately isolated myself since I live with my mother and I did not want to take any chances. The fever stayed for a couple of days, the highest it went up to was 102 degrees. On the 6th day of contracting the virus, I lost the sense of smell and that was a sure red flag for me that it was Covid.

I did not step out of my home or my room for 17 days straight. For the test, the sample was collected from home and the test results came within a day. My mother was also tested simultaneously but she tested negative.

Fear of Covid? There was none. My immediate reaction was, “Ok, everybody is getting it, now I am one of them.” That was the scenario then. But if it happened now this month, I would have been really scared. Things have got much worse and the fear of death has hit home. Just today I heard the tragic news of two Covid deaths in my immediate social circle. How long is it going to last?