Living with Covid-19 (Literally)
It all started with a notification.
I have two brothers, each of them living with a different parent.
To make it easier to refer to, the fat brother lets call him A, and skinny brother B.
A sent a message to B who was living with me as well, informed him that he is ART positive (Antigen Rapid Test). Initially, I was feeling quite nonchalent about it since none was really visited our dad in the past few weeks.
To my horror, B actually went to the house A was living in for 3 hours just the day before after his physical exam in school. We quickly took our own ART test as well and it all turned out fine.
Then came the second shock, A did not take a PCR test despite having symptoms, the reason being there was not enough clinics the area doing swab tests for Thursdays and Fridays. A new shock came sooner than expected, I went to visit my dad to help him take the ART test at home and found that he became the one being qurantined at the room instead of the infected one.
Moving to the next stage
As days passed, anxiety level increased and I began to go to gym with a fear that I might get infected any time. On the Saturady of the same week, I received another notification from my brother B, informing me that he has turned ART positive as well.
This marks the beginning of my very tiring week ahead:
Day 1 — I had to clear my room of most of my belongings and get it ready to be used as a proper quarantine/isolation room. To make things even more complicated, my room does not have an attached toilet so I have no choice but to share the common bathroom with him
Day 2 — It marks as one of those days of my life that I did the most amount of cleaning and disinfecting. Because of the common toilet I had to wait for an interval of 15 mins after B used the toilet to allow the air to settle and safe enough for me to conduct cleaning.
Day 3 & 4 — These two days mark my true anxiety because if either my mom or me turn COVID positive, it would be an extension of 10 days self-isolation again. My house has only sufficient space for one and this is extremely tricky to handle if it happens.
Day 5 — By this day we were most likely affirmed that we are not infected by brother B, however we still have to keep our instincts sharp. My mom almost forogt about it and left brother B’s cup on my desk in the living room before washing it.
The amount of swabs that I have done over the week ever since brother A confirmed to have Covid-19
My key takeaway from this episode is that Covid does not make the infected feel too stressed and worried, but has the opposite effect on people surrouding the infected.
The constant fear is that the next family member who turn positive would cause the next batch of people to move forth towards another 7 to 10 days of isolation.
As of writing, this is the 8th day of isolation for my infected brother.
He is no longer symptomatic but he might be still shedding viral fragments. Thankfully completed the vaccination regime in August and another living proof that vaccination works to reduce the risk of Covid greatly.
Now, I need to maintain covid free for another 33 days for my flight into December to spend my longer awaited winter holiday.
Wish me luck and good hygiene.
