COVID-19 is a real battle, don’t take it lightly.
Okay…so let me make it very clear that I decided to write this story when I heard one of my team members saying corona is a real struggle. “Consider everyone has COVID. Be cautious.” For a moment I thought, wait…it’s November, and everybody is chilling without fearing the infection of coronavirus disease. I went shopping yesterday, everything was freaking normal. But I got a chill when I heard her struggles with the infection and how she came out of it.
Hey! So, I am a content writer at The Wonk. My job basically is to create content, but today I have decided to write this story with a very personal touch because it is about two people who I know personally. Two of my team members have actually survived the COVID battle. Two people from two different states of India actually contacted with the same virus but have poles apart stories.
I just want you to imagine a situation where you face difficulty to even breathe and feel like your nose is stuffed with cotton balls. Hellish, of course. If having a normal cough and cold makes your life miserable and makes you realise the importance of your nose and tongue, just envision yourself losing the capability to breathe, smell, and taste. I can understand, just the thought of it can make you dispirited. But believe me, corona actually does it to you; thus, beware of the virus.
Asavari Bharadwaj, Content Head at The Wonk, shared her COVID story and how she survived it. So, let’s begin with her story to get some inspiration and also to understand the fact that we should take the virus seriously as it not only affects you physically but cripples you mentally as well.
“I dodged COVID when my husband was tested positive for it in September. I came in close contact with him but still was tested negative for this deadly disease. But remember, if once you win the race with the virus, it will not be a similar case always. You have to win the race every time, but the virus has to come out as a winner just once and game over,” said Asavari.
She believes that the perception that people have about the virus is not exactly true because the virus has no particular tendency to work in a defined manner. It works differently on different bodies. You will be tested COVID positive when you least expect it. She said, “I ducked the virus in September, but was tested positive in October.”
While explaining about the virus, she also gave the reason for not getting infected with the virus for the first time when her husband was positive, that’s majorly because of the high CT (Cycle Threshold) value of her husband’s COVID infection.
CT value basically indicates – how much virus an infected person harbor. Confusing? Allow me to explain. Cycle Threshold value helps in deciding how contagious the infected person is. It is basically the number of cycles needed for the virus to be detected from the person’s sample. The higher the concentration, the lesser number of cycles are needed for the virus to be detected. And if the CT value is higher, it is believed that the concentration is lesser. For example, if A’s CT value is 25 and B’s CT value is 15, that ultimately means B is carrying a higher infection load than A and is more likely to infect others.
Asavari said, “Everything was going normal. My husband was also fine and now tested negative for coronavirus. But during Navratri, we had many visitors coming home. Later on, we came to know that one of the visitors was COVID positive during the visit. The moment we received this information, I and my family members immediately went for the COVID test.”
“We were all tested negative for corona at first as we were at the very young age of the infection but my mother-in-law and I were tested positive when we were tested again for the virus after a week as my mother-in-law was having body ache and was feeling feverish. My husband, Prateek was tested negative because he had enough number of antibodies against the virus as he was once infected with the virus. Nandini, my sister-in-law was also tested negative at that time.”
“Later, after a few days, Nandini was also tested positive. Now all three of us were positive and therefore decided to stay together. We had fun as we were cooking and Netflixing together. No doubt, cooking and Netflixing sound interesting and fun, but nobody knows about the inner struggle your body is going through.”
According to Asavari, “Corona is not just about the struggles you face when you are positive, but the effects it leaves on your body after it’s gone is the real struggle. The shivers, the breathless nights, no sense of taste and smell, these symptoms not only hamper your physical well-being but somewhere also have a shocking effect on your mental health too.”
“I am now negative for COVID-19, but my brain always asks me, why I still have a stuffy nose? Why am I unable to breathe? Why I am gasping for air during nights? Has my tongue lost its taste forever? For how long will I not be able to smell anything? Why? Why? And why?”
“Therefore, I say: Consider everyone has COVID. Be cautious.”
Garsha Sai Nitish, on the other hand, lives in Hyderabad and is working from home because of the COVID-19. His story is quite different from Asavari, but except for the fact that they both dodged COVID once. Garsha’s mother was also tested positive for COVID in August but nobody else was then tested positive in his family. It was then in October when one morning he was not feeling well and was having mild fever, he decided to get tested for COVID-19.
When the results of the test came in, he was shocked to see that he was tested positive. Well, unlike Asavari, Garsha had no other symptoms except the high temperature. But of course, there is a common thread in both of their stories: The quarantine. This one word “quarantine” is common for not only these two but for everyone who was and is infected with the virus. Believe it or not, but staying isolated really hampers the physical and mental condition of a person. Nobody likes to stay alone locked in a room, but that’s important to keep others protected. So, there’s nothing we can do about it.
We at The Wonk decided to delineate these stories just because we want people to not let this virus take over them and their families. The clear motive behind this article was to not let people get paranoid with the virus and not let this pandemic take a toll on their mental health. We want our readers to stay protected and stay healthy. Through these stories we want you all to not take the virus lightly and follow all safety measures because it not only affects you but also has an impact on your family members with long-lasting or sometimes never-ending effects.