My little true story of the day I thought COVID caught me, do read on!
There was a strange feeling in me when I got up that morning last year 2021, feeling as if a silent storm was brewing around me, you know, the eerie stillness before a storm, and felt a queer wobbly feeling. I lost all appetite and thought to myself. “Never felt so miserable before” Yes, I had common colds but never felt chilled to the bone with that strange taste. I suddenly thought in horror, “I must be having COVID”. I ran to the kitchen and tried out the “Coffee Test.” Weeks earlier, I had written an article on finding the symptoms of COVID and referenced a doctor who shared about the Coffee Test who emphatically claimed that “the last step to find out if you have COVID is to smell coffee and if you cannot smell coffee, you definitely have COVID, that’s the time to go to the hospital.”
I gingerly took out a spoon of coffee from the bottle and was petrified to find out that I could not smell a thing, stricken with horror, my hair stood on one end as I stood shell-shocked as if it was the end of the world. It was confirmed that I was soon going to die. I suspected I had difficulty breathing or was it imaginary? It never occurred to me that I could be cured if I had COVID.
Ever since COVID sneaked into the world so insidiously, I had been reading and writing about it furiously, watching videos and studying about it from all angles, and writing down its depressing details in dozens of articles. The second wave in India was a death call over the land. It became especially deathly when a known friend, Eric Soan’s life was snatched away by COVID in Mumbai. I mean, people like Eric didn’t just die suddenly from COVID, something was drastically wrong. Of course, we comfort ourselves in knowing he is in a better place, but such is COVID, it snatches away people suddenly like a cruel wind in the night.
I had seen all the ghoulish pictures of the thousands of funeral pyres and graves our late photojournalist Danish Siddiqui shared, with no place to bury the dead, no oxygen, and overflowing hospitals where millions had to recuperate at home, and many died gasping for oxygen, thus one could hardly blame me when I got as frightened as a chicken when I got the symptoms of COVID, for it was not so much death but the terror associated with it.
I had told my pastor’s wife in a sinking sorrowful voice that I probably had COVID and she tried to arrange for an ambulance to take me to a hospital she suggested, but in the end, went by car. All the way to the hospital which was located somewhere near the fringes of a jungle, I was smothered in a cloud of gloom thinking that if I died in the hospital, no one would even come near me in that lonely area and I grieved for my loved ones left behind. I stared out of the car window and saw a cloud in the shape of a flaming cross hanging in the sky and I was convinced this was a sign from the Heavens I was going to die.
On arriving at the Christian hospital located near the pine-green forest amid sprawling lawns and cottages scattered over the massive campus, I enquired about doing a COVID test. The health aides coolly informed me that it was Sunday and the test could only be performed on Monday.
“How strange, I thought, “does COVID sleep on Sundays?” I was so sure that I had COVID because the Coffee Test proved it that I felt it was only ethical to get admitted to prevent the pandemic from spreading. However, an inner pulling voice told me, “Don’t get admitted to the hospital.”.
Going back home, I tried to isolate as much as I could, and again, the pastor’s wife got someone over to sell me an oximeter, and as he handed it over to me, heavily masked and distanced, it hit me how COVID creates a thick wall between you and all people, it was no ordinary virus. In fact, at that time, things turned very lonely and if a person dares to get a whiff you have COVID, they would cordon you off like a marooned island and keep away as if you had leprosy, which is only right because we have to isolate, the thumb rule of COVID.
The clock was ticking its death sentence each moment, and filled with emotions of finality, found myself in tears very often, imaging how it would be when I was gone. I kept checking my oxygen levels on the oximeter in a hypochondriac frenzy. Moments were so final. I ate a frugal diet of boiled eggs, watery sooji, hot water, and Khichdi, antibiotics, and Dolo 650, keeping my two sons miles away while Krissy the house helper at the time gave me the hot water and cooked for me. (Krissy was doubly vaccinated, distanced, masked, and heavily sanitized, I did not get my first vaccine!)
I tried to get medical aid to come to the house and do the COVID test but they never turned up though they promised they would. I finally made it to the government hospital to check whether I had COVID and it was streaming in with people and I was dead sure everyone was infected.
Finally, when they did the COVID test for me and confirmed I was NEGATIVE, never had a word sounded so POSITIVE! I was ecstatic though stunned to learn that I DID NOT HAVE COVID! Then, then what about the Coffee Test!! Well, the first thing I did when I got back home was to correct my article on the Coffee Test. Yes, I did not have COVID because not only did the test confirm I was negative, but I responded fast to antibiotics, and no one else caught COVID around me, nor my family.
My conclusion of this life-changing experience is never to be so quick to write your own death verdict, never jump to conclusions, and not take everything you read from a doctor to be Gospel truth, such as the Coffee Test, which pressed my panic buttons. (Seasonal allergic flu virus also causes loss of smell) Be calm and believe in the best in all situations. And hey, also, if you do get COVID, you can be cured, it’s not the end! Last, but not least, all my dear friends and family were also praying much!
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