The hospital was generally silent, except for the violent coughing fit of a fellow covid-19 patient coming from the nearest room and the ‘beep…beep’ of the ventilator -constant reminders that you’re in a containment zone where people are fighting for their lives and to retain their sanity.
I preferred to sit in the bench largely to avoid the bed, especially since the rubbing of the crumpled cotton sheet made me sweaty as the temperature climbed beyond the discomforting levels of 30 degree Celsius. The only saving grace was that the hospital allowed me to carry my laptop and mobile phone, so that I could watch videos, write or read news. Also, the noise of IOS Daniel (one of the voices in Voiceover software on iPhone) and Eloquence were the only familiar sounds to keep me from panicking.
When I got bored of writing or listening, I put the devices aside and thought how exactly I managed to land in the passage to hell on the pandemic highway? I stayed indoors for nearly 200 days, avoided meeting outsiders and kept up my walking routine (the only exercise I manage to do) precisely to avoid the time at the hospital as covid-19 patient.
From the mid-March, as I began work from home at the comfort of my family home in Chennai, till the first week of August, there seemed no danger of me contracting the virus, though my brother went out to manage his business.
But all hell broke lose on August 3, when my aunty, dad’s older brother’s wife, passed away at 78 in Srirangam, the temple town nearly 324-kilometres from Chennai. My 84-year-old uncle was left alone with her body. The trove of relatives, including my brother and cousin, started for Srirangam the same evening. They helped uncle cremate aunty and brought him home on August 5. He was old and was nowhere to go. We, as his brother’s children, were the only relatives in the position to shelter him.
I conducted my first ever writing Webinar on August 1, boasting to my relatives about my ability to dodge the virus. My birthday on August 6 was relatively event-free.
On August 10, five days after my uncle had arrived, I woke up from the afternoon siesta with a scratchy throat and a mild fever of 100.2 Fahrenheit. The fever was on and off and the discomfort came and went. I felt completely alright one moment and then disappeared behind the bathroom door to spit out the little deposit of phlegm from my throat. When someone asked me about the symptoms, I blamed it on the change in weather.
My brother asked me to isolate, which I was only too happy to do. I thought that would restrict the exposure and I wasn’t too wrong. The first sign of concern was the rapidly dropping blood oxygen levels. On the evening of August 15, the oximeter showed 97. Some hours later, it was 91. The fever returned and I had to take leave from work.
When the oximeter reading fluctuated a few more times, I grew concerned and told my family that I’d like to test for covid-19. I was fairly sure that my health wasn’t bad enough to warrant the time at the hospital, but my family saw it differently. “What if you had to take treatment at hospital?” my brother asked. I tried to hide the shudder and assured him that I was healthy enough to go on a complete isolation at home.
*I’m giving the story in smaller chunks for easy reading. Watch this space for the next part. If you like it, why don’t you say it? You can like, comment or share this post.