Once I caught The Bug (Covid)
It is my birthday today.
When I turned twenty-five, half a lifetime ago, I laid in bed thinking I was so old, to be a quarter of a century.
Time is how we frame it, as with all things. But Time is particularly tricky, with its immense power to cower us and shame us as well as prod and cheer us.
Only twenty and you have been to so many places?
Forty and you still cannot spell/swim/saute — and still, … single?
You get the idea.
I got lovely birthday greetings, thanks in part to Metaverse that helped announce it to everyone I said ‘yes’ to being friends with. One greeting however did stick out — “you are alive!” — and that is because, just twenty days prior, I received the unwelcome yet anticipated SMS from our Ministry of Health to confirm that I am a Covid +.
It was quite spectacular actually that I should test positive. The previous Tuesday, I felt buggy, but we had a family break planned for the next three days in a local hotel. So we went and I took it real slow. On Friday night, I felt a little worse, took an ART (a rapid test) which signaled that I was not in the clear. In Singapore, the protocol is to head straight to a clinic for a more failsafe PCR test.
At the clinic entrance, chairs were safely distanced out in two perpendicular rows. Feeling a tad weak, I sat in one. A staff came out and finding out I wasn’t there for my booster vaccination jab, deftly shooed me to the other row of chairs. I feel badly that I sat in the wrong place and maybe offloaded some virus.
A young, fine-looking doctor attended to me. He was only wearing a mask and with great skill too samples for both an ART and PCR. “Go home and wait, the Ministry of Health will notify you of the results tomorrow. Meanwhile, these medicines will help you feel better”.
Once home, the family decides that I should begin my quarantine and I get the room with the ensuite bathroom while everyone else, including my cat, steered clear.
As a writer, my clever little plan even as my brain began to fog, was to write my way through the days of confinement in my room. I posted them on facebook, and got plenty of cheer to hurry up and get well.