After almost two years reporting on the Covid pandemic as a health journalist, Felicity thought she’d be prepared when she caught it. She was wrong.
of her experience with the virus, spanning from her diagnosis in early December to her continuing struggles with its long-term effects well over a month later.First though, here is a list of tips she wishes she’d known both before catching Covid and during the early days of her illness.
I check the company Slack. Someone posted the news the night before – it was an attendee at our Christmas party who was Covid-positive.I call my partner. He is on the street outside his Melbourne office and stops there, not even going in to collect his bags. My partner calls a friend who is away on holidays for a few days and secures us a house in Footscray. I’m uneasy. What if we’re Covid-positive, and will be shedding viral particles all over their house? We catch a train there.
Yesterday, after numerous incoming calls from an individual at NSW Health, I sent over a list of the 19 party attendees’ phone numbers. It turns out Attendee #1 had caught Covid at a pub trivia night at Oxford Tavern in Petersham, which wasAnd Attendee #1 had met up with Attendee #2 on Friday morning. And Attendee #2 just tested positive. So we are all close contacts now.Aaaand ping, a message from “DH-COVID-19” hits my phone at 1:49pm.
I call my friend at 1:52pm to tell them the bad news. Everyone at their party on Saturday night needs to get tested. I push it out of my mind. All the statistics tell me I’m low risk. I’m 30, I’m otherwise healthy, I’ll be fine. It’s just a moderate cold. I don’t even bother to call a GP. What are they going to do? That’s what I think – rather foolishly in retrospect.
There are no clothes cleaning facilities either, we’re told. We only have three changes of clothes with us, we say.“We don’t have any more changes of clothes with us, we came on a weekend holiday. Can we buy clothes and have them delivered to hotel quarantine?” we ask, politely. I’m starting to despair at this point. Can we rent a car and drive to a family holiday house seven hours away? No, probably not, as it’s across the NSW border.
We give our friend’s house a thorough deep clean. It smells like a hospital by the time we scamper out. Under an umbrella, masked, we try not to look too much like people escaping from house arrest.Days into a Covid-positive brain fog, all I can do is listen to the pitter-patter patter of the cricket commentators.
Time for coffee and cricket. The Macca’s coffee is tasteless, even with extra sugar, honey and hazelnut. It creeps me out. 1. You’re a fit and healthy 30-year-old who is double vaccinated and has pre-existing anxiety. This is much more likely to be anxiety than genuine breathing difficulty. This is the first bit of useful medical advice I’ve received from anyone in the four days since I tested positive.
Nevertheless, the contact tracer ploughs on undeterred. Around 15 minutes in, the official tells us he is going to read out some statements “even though they are clearly not relevant to our situation”. Why, then, are you reading them out? A nice lady doing the graveyard shift on the other end of the line agrees with me: I’m probably just a bit anxious because I’m away from home and I’ve got a virus that has been talked up for two years.
We finally chat to a GP in the daytime hours. It’s amazingly helpful. My partner gets codeine-paracetamol for his severe muscle aches and headaches. He’s been in so much pain that he’s been writhing in bed. It’s awful to watch. “Gosh, how do people manage this illness in isolation if they don’t have a support person?” I wonder.At around midday, my partner turns off the dumb comedy podcast we’ve been listening to and goes very quiet.He’s been hot to the touch for the past 24 hours and his breathing is shallow. He’s had pneumonia four times before and been hospitalised for it. I trust he knows when things are dire in the lung capacity department.
They check my partner’s blood oxygen levels, and he’s fine. They check his pulse, also fine. They check his temperature and blood pressure and run an ECG. Nothing to worry about. My partner has been triaged into the “hospital in the home” system for Covid patients, she says. They just need to collect some information so he can receive that support.
About 20 questions in, including questions as to my partner’s current mental wellbeing, the woman warns us the next question “might be a bit sensitive or upsetting”. My partner gets calls from the same service each day. They don’t let him answer with “same as yesterday, except …” – he has to go through the whole interrogation from the top.
So, eight days after I tested positive for Covid, and two days before I’m released into the community, I get referred to a local GP. And this service gets state government funding? Nursing work is hard work, particularly when you’re sick yourself and away from home. I don’t mind doing it at all, but it’s tiring being so isolated.December 17, 2021And I can confirm, from a comprehensive sampling of West Footscray’s coffee shops, that Melbourne coffee is not as good as Sydney coffee.. I couldn’t deal with TV drama before; it was too mentally taxing and I couldn’t pick up the nuance.Day 16, I’ll be home for Christmas!My partner finally has just enough energy to fly home.
Being home feels slightly safer. I can relax a bit. There are people who can help with things. But I’m dreading the pandemic wave crashing into my friends and family.More than 35,000 cases have been reported in the past 24 hours, with 1491 hospitalisations, 119 people in ICU and 32 on ventilators. Three deaths.PCR tests results are being delayed by up to a week. Pathology labs are shutting their doors to process the mountains of tests.A close friend has tested positive on a RAT.
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