COVID-19 who?

As you may have figured, coming from the last time I wrote, the virus hit us. The results we were waiting for all turned out to be positive — Papa’s scaled between moderate to severe (brought about by the pneumonia but good thing intubation wasn’t necessary), while Mama’s and King’s were both tagged as asymptomatic. What made the whole thing extra taxing was the timings, as the swab tests weren’t taken at the same time hence the isolation coming after one another. All in all, the whole thing consumed more than a month of our time, with me having to be out of work for a total of 23 days. Gahd, this has got to be the longest leave I ever had in my entire career, even topping the instances I transferred to new companies!

I gotta say, even if we are in the WFH set-up, dealing with shit like this is not at all easy. At the height of Papa’s hospitalization, had to be the one to go back and forth so Mama won’t have to. Apart from the actual situation that we were in, of course we still had to be even more careful to minimize further damages. Shoutout to our relatives and family friends who extended help and lent their times to switch with me when I couldn’t be at the hospital. The arrangement was pretty exhausting too, since Papa was confirmed to be COVID-19 positive, he was stationed with the rest of the other patients with the same diagnosis — they call this the COVID area, while us visitors remain at the waiting area where they’d call for us whenever the doctors or nurses have something to relay. For two weeks, this was how my life went, all while waiting for Mama’s and King’s swab test results.

Receiving positive results for Mama and King came as a surprise, as that one time when King had fever and Mama complained about losing her sense of taste didn’t occur to us as symptoms, but well, apparently they were. They never had manifestations after and so we never thought they caught the virus too. Also, we started wearing masks, social distanced and had separate stations in the house the moment Papa had fever, and also, also — it’s still bugging me how they were classified as asymptomatic when they had symptoms l o l, like really, how? Anyway, their results came about more than a week after Papa’s, and we were told that DOH had new guidelines in place so Mama and King were to be isolated for fourteen days, away from home.

Imagine how long has that been! It was already August 29 at that time and we had to count two weeks more! Being left alone in the house was not a problem, but I still couldn’t get back to work as I’d have to attend to a lot of calls, messages and errands that should follow schedules dictated by the mother of course. Plus you know even if I’m a lazy ass, I’m really OC so the household chores were added to my plate too. But that’s okay because Mama didn’t wanna believe I have it in me l o l

Since I had exposure to confirmed COVID-19 positive people, I closely coordinated with doctors whom were really helpful and provided me with a lot of useful information. Still, they recommended that I take a swab test, but this one I wasn’t able to get easily due to the volume of patients and changes with DOH’s guidelines. I actually lost hope already and accepted the fact that I’d never know and just move on since I wasn’t feeling anything anyway. When Mama and King’s isolation period was about to finish, the doctor assigned to our family was able to arrange a swab test for me, and on September 10, I finally got tested. It was another week of waiting and bracing myself once more because if I get a positive result, it would mean what — another round of isolation and more absences o h m y g o d this would feel like a maternity leave already??? And also, I’ve been wanting to come out of this hibernation and get back to the “normal” quarantine life at least.

Wrong spelling but close enough to be really me

Today, I finally received the results and it is so refreshing to see a negative one!

I mean, wow. 3 out of 4 in the household (sister is not staying with us for the meantime as her employer arranged a place for them to stay) tested positive which is why I was actually leaning more on the positive side too. On the other hand, I had a little hope that I’d get a negative because well, I can say that I have a really strong immune system. In this family I’m the one who’s never had any health issues so far, except for asthma when I was a kid but I never had any attacks since high school. Other than that, there’s nothing more requiring any constant medication — I don’t catch fevers easily even if I get wet with the rain and I even escaped dengue five years back without having to be confined and was able to up my platelet count just by eating papaya and drinking Pedialyte. Even I am mind blown with this sorcery!

So anyway, I am in so much relief now that I have no more what-ifs surrounding this ordeal! I can finally be at peace knowing for real, with certainty that I wouldn’t have caused harm to anyone I’ve seen or talk to in this whole COVID phase in our lives.

Now time to catch up on 7,006 work-related Viber messages and 1,069 e-mails!

We meet again, Monday.