When the heady aroma of the home-cooked biriyani was lost on me, I knew something was terribly amiss. Besides, I was running a temperature and had a sore throat.
Continually made aware of COVID-19 symptoms by reading material and television programmes, I was not going to ignore this troika.
Only a few weeks ago, my brother-in-law had succumbed to COVID-19, plunging our family in shock.
My fears that I had COVID-19 came true on May 19 when the test results arrived. My son took me to the old Railway Hospital in Perambur for admission, and I cried all the way, and the tears wouldn't stop even when I was getting admitted. Various scenarios were running through my mind; the thought that I might not recover was uppermost. As a seventy-one-year-old, I was in the at-risk group. I did not want to miss the company of my children and grandchildren. Besides, I am involved in many social activities, including being a patron of a Corporation-run Urdu school, and so I wanted to live.
For the first two days at the hospital, I was a picture of misery. Distraught, I was unable to sleep well. The problems were not all psychological: My oxygen saturation levels had dropped. Later, I was moved to a more spacious building, and there were many others like me, who were lying on beds, every two of them separated by three feet.
We would be woken up at 4 a.m. for two shots of injection by the staff in PPE suit — I did not know if it was the doctor or nurse as I never got to see their faces.
With masks on, it was nice to exchange a few words with the person next to you.
The scene in the COVID-19 special ward also added to my fear. Some of the patients would be responding well to treatment but one sudden day you would see them being shifted to the ICU. One person was in a coma for one week and was then transferred to the ICU. So, I never knew what was in store for me. Would I be able to return home?
Some functions at the hospital were familiar to me because I had worked as an attendant at the railway hospital and knew why each equipment was being bought.
Until the fifth day, I was nervous wreck – not sure if I would recover from the disease. On the sixth day, the doctor asked me to go home but I asked if I could stay back as my throat had not cleared completely and I did not want to go home and infect the others.
My daughter-in-law and son had also tested positive. I stay in Pensioner’s Lane in Old Washermanpet with my third son, who lives with his family on the ground floor; the other two floors are occupied by my second and first son along with their respective families.
I now enjoy the company of my grandchildren, and I have been able to put this episode behind me.
However, I remember the details well enough for me to offer words of encouragement to those who are in a battle against COVID-19.
(As told to Liffy Thomas)
