Being Positive

 

After one year of dodging the  infection and taking one shot of the vaccine, I tested positive for the Corona Virus a couple of days ago. It was a bit of a shock to see the result because my husband’s test was negative and I had been hoping that it would be the same for me too, despite the mild fever and the sore throat I had been having since  the last three days. Actually on Monday when I did the test, my symptoms were negligible and I did consider postponing it to Tuesday. Had I done so, I do not think I would have even taken the test because on Tuesday morning as I sat with my test results  in one hand and my morning cup of coffee on the other, I felt absolutely fine , ready to go for the morning walk which I had missed over the weekend because I was feeling tiered!

There were myriad feelings going through me as I moved my things out of  our bedroom to the spare bedroom.  The feeling that was top most in my mind was of guilt. My husband has diabetes and is hypertensive and is therefore in the comorbid category. I had brought in the virus into our home and put him at risk!

The next step was to inform people. I had been in contact with at least 3 organizations in the last three days as part of an assignment I was doing with a colleague. So I wrote out  emails informing them about my condition and asked them to test themselves or isolate. Then there was the question of informing the extended family – my sister who in turn informed my parents. We calculated the gap in the number of days between when I had met my parents and whether there was any risk to them. Fortunately it had been the a week ago and they were not reporting any symptoms.  Then came the question of informing our neighbours. How and when should I do it?

It was a challenge convincing my husband that we should inform our neighbours . His take was that we should just quietly self isolate because few of the six families  in the building visited each other regularly. In case someone did visit us we could always tell them through a window that they should stay away. But then there was the question of the Chennai Corporation health authorities. Some one from there was bound to visit and if that was how our neighbours got to know about this it would not be nice. We argued through our masks about this until I retreated behind the door of self isolation. I then called each one of them and informed them individually. I must say they were rather nice about it.

Meanwhile, at a personal level it was a very disconcerting situation for me . I was positive , not sick and burdened with the enormous guilt of having the infection, arguing with my husband about social responsibility while all the time wondering what needed to be done next. I texted a couple of my close friends who said that I needed to speak to a doctor.

Amidst responding to best wishes for the various Indian new year ( Ugadi, Baisakhi etc ) that were coming in through whatsapp and social media I tried to google for doctors since  we do not have that proverbial “family doctor”. My husband consults a cardiologist while my daughter used to be taken to a paediatrician until she was eighteen.  I have never been sick enough to ever need a doctor so I really did not know what to do.

It was then that a professional acquaintance volunteered the name of a doctor who consulted at a clinic nearby. This was also the place where my husband and I had taken our first vaccine shots. So I called them and fixed a tele appointment with her.

Meanwhile, someone in the family called me and told me about how my job was the reason that all of this was happening -“You go to villages and slums and bring all this nonsense into the family” ! I was terribly hurt. I wondered if this would have been the case if it had been my husband who had been the first to get the infection in the family? Or what if I  had been really sick? I felt miserable and wanted to get really sick so people would at least show me some empathy.

But meanwhile some practicalities had to be taken care of. Cooking for instance. My husband can barely cook and given the circumstances, the option was to either help him to cook or order food. Finally I decided on the former, hoping he would take instructions

It required a lot of patience to do this remotely – tell him what could go wrong if he did not follow something. What not to do and what to do. I was amazed how a fifty something man could still not differentiate between different dals, wasted time slitting chillies even though they were to be ground in the mixer and could not chop ladies finger. Watching him from afar, I realized what made women experts at multi tasking was the training from our younger days to cook dal on one burner while the vegetables were cooking on the other and the rice on the third.

I had learnt to cook when I was ten or eleven years old because my mother used to self isolate when she was menstruating. I would wake up at 5.00 and along with my father cook break fast, pack our  school lunch and keep food for my mother and leave for school at 8.10 AM like every other day. This was the training that had seen me through my twenty five years of married life, with nineteen years of those being spent in a rambling old house with untrained and erratic domestic help.

We have now established a routine through these days of my isolation. I sit in my room and work or read and sometimes text my friends. Few of them know my status. Some of those who do know call me regularly and ask for updates. Others who also know send me that mandatory message with a :Good morning” every day along with “How r u feeling” to which I reply “ fine”.  I guess they feel they have done their good deed for the day .

But meanwhile my mind floods with emotions and memories from my childhood days of my mother’s isolation rules during menstruation.  There is that feeling of helplessness of waiting for someone to tell you to  come and eat, of eating what can be provided to you by that person. The feeling of dependency was terrible.

People who tell me how lucky I am that my symptoms are mild probably do not realize how frustrating that can be. You are ill, but do not feel or look ill. And then there is always that fear that the other person at home should not get the infection. But It was my doctor who actually reminded me that despite all of this, I am sick. My symptoms could escalate at any point and I had to take care of myself. I  suffer from an auto immune disorder which is something that had completely slipped my mind until she asked me some questions during our discussion.

The clock is ticking. Today is day 3 after receipt of the test result. I watch from my window and small balcony, mornings that turn into afternoons that turn to evenings and then nights.  When I am not working I am answering the Chennai Corporation’s calls , providing answers to the same questions – what were the places I had visited during the past one month. They wanted to come and “sanitize” our building spraying Lysol which I refused to allow. I also told them that I would not allow them to stick that horrible sticker outside our door. It has been an ongoing battle .

In the meanwhile, I am also dealing with my cat who is suffering from some kind of separation anxiety because I am not moving around the house or working in the kitchen as I normally do. He looks sad and unhappy. But I think he is probably picking up the mood at home.

 Fourteen days of self isolation when you are not sick enough to require rest, is something that plays on people’s mental health. And if it is a woman it is doubly hard because you have to just sit inside a room and watch your home management go haywire.

You are also battling demons inside your head. You wonder if you should give up your work and just stay at home? But I have the financial resources to ponder about such things. For many women like my domestic help , it is not a choice. They bear the responsibility of their families . She had taken the vaccine last week after a lot of nagging from me. She has now forced me to allow her to clean up the rest of the house while I stay locked up in my room. We communicate over phone  while she is here. I realize it is her way of showing solidarity  because I have helped her through her crisis.

And thus life goes on - through disinfectant sprays, hand wipes, masked conversations and monitoring oxygen saturation levels. Praying that this cloud passes off without causing further damage.