I'll Never Know If What I Had Was Covid
Wild thoughts during self-imposed isolation
Photo by Polina Tankilevitch from Pexels
Note on names: as friends IRL who are also subscribers will notice, my husband Donny, and my children Sofie and Theo, appear by their second names in my writing: as Francis, Dione, and Joaquin. I explained why at the bottom part of this newsletter’s about page.
Today is my 14th day of self-isolation since three of us in our house — me, my spouse Francis, and our toddler Joaquin — went down with fever, body ache, headaches, and sniffles. Five days before the three of us had symptoms together, it was our 9-year-old daughter Dione who had fever, body ache, headache, and sniffles. When Dione got well after only two days, we didn’t think much of it, till whatever she had seemed to have infected us, too.
When the three of us showed symptoms, we went down pretty bad and quick: the headache and fatigue were very debilitating. Only Dione, who had first gotten whatever it was and survived it, was well enough to stand and move around. Little Joaquin, thankfully, was able to just sleep through most of it — since he’d still wake up to eat and drink a little, as long as he could work up an appetite and was breathing well, Francis and I figured that rather than drain ourselves with needless worry, we should focus instead on recovering as fast as we could. On the second day of our symptoms, however, we began to worry when Joaquin vomited a lot and refused to eat. Francis and I agreed to calm the little boy through the night, and to take him (actually, all of us) to the hospital the following day.
On the third day since we showed symptoms, after we’ve made up our minds to “surrender” ourselves, via the hospital, to health authorities who’ll swab our noses, send a memo to our condo homeowners’ group, and send us to isolation facilities if we were deemed not sick enough for a hospital bed, Joaquin was up and about like he hadn’t been sick. Joaquin was suddenly back to his noisy, rambunctious self that his 40-year-old parents could barely keep up with. Our two children, Dione and Joaquin, though still unvaccinated, must’ve had what it takes to easily recover from whatever it was. Francis and I, on the other hand, vaccinated twice and about to take our boosters when our symptoms appeared, needed a couple more days (4 days total) to be able to get up from bed to do more than use the toilet, open canned food, talk to anyone.
During the worst phase — the two days when Francis and I were too weak to move, speak, even think that we might still die after two years of successfully avoiding Covid— we totally isolated ourselves as a result of our inability to even call up anyone. With our heads in a fog, Francis and I probably made a very bad judgment call to just stay in bed and look out for worsening symptoms before letting anyone else know that we might need help, that it might get worse. Whatever little energy we had, we used up for taking turns looking after Joaquin, making sure that he breathed as he slept, that his oxygen levels were okay, that aside from fever he wasn’t having rashes, diarrhea, or any of the signs that would make us regret giving in to inertia.
Our pantry and medicine cabinet, thankfully, had been stocked when Dione got sick, and Francis and I thought of preparing to isolate the family in case Dione tested positive. The Omicron wave in Manila, where we live, hit us like post-holiday revenge: we were like being punished for taking the kids shopping for toys, for holding family feasts with whoever survived the first few waves of death. As soon as the calendars flipped to 2022, pharmacies ran out of paracetamol, cough syrups, and COVID test kits. Pediatric wards were getting full as hospitals shed off staff with every other doctor and nurse going to quarantine. Government offices shut down one after another for a “health break.” Schools followed suit as student attendance dwindled, and teachers demanded time to care for their own sick children, as well as their overworked, underpaid selves.
Four days since we developed symptoms, our family fully recovered. If only out of curiosity, we wanted to know if what we had were COVID, the so-called “milder” Omicron. But —
—responsible citizens that we are (or, whatever we wanted to tell ourselves), we chose to stay home rather than drive around pharmacies, looking for test kits;
— overthinkers that we are, when we realized that the only way for us to get tested was go to a hospital or a government testing unit, realizing as well that if we tested positive, even with symptoms gone we’ll still be sent to a facility, or closely monitored at home for 14 days, with steep penalties for trying to get out, so rather than bet on a 50–50 chance that we didn’t have COVID, we chose instead to just not find out and stay home like the responsible citizens that we are (or whatever we wanted to tell ourselves).
Our pantry lasted well into our 14th day of self-imposed isolation. Halfway through, I thought of informing my parents, who thoughtfully sent cooked food and groceries to our doorstep. Aside from them, we’d let no other soul know that we had symptoms, and that by a combination of inertia, overthinking, and unreliable judgment, we passed up the chance to get tested for COVID.
What if we were negative, after all? We had just isolated ourselves for nothing. But what if we were positive? I feel a bit silly, looking back to what had held us back, we who in our best state of health could claim to be rational decision-makers, but who succumbed to mental vulnerability when whatever it was — COVID? the flu ?— hit us. At our rawest, Francis and I honestly thought: we didn’t want to be quarantined elsewhere, if it ever comes to that. We didn’t want to be leashed, even for just a couple of weeks, preferring not to go out of our own accord, not even for a burger drive-thru when we could very well take up indoor space in the burger joint because we had vaccination cards and were no longer symptomatic. We managed to strictly stay home through it all, what difference would it make to let the government know? We were lucky we were spared of the pandemic’s deadliest effects, what if we and the children weren’t so lucky?
And then it hit me, as strongly as whatever it was that had sent me reeling: what if I and my husband weren’t the only ones who thought this way through their symptoms? The shopkeeper who didn’t feel sick enough to waste a day of work, who might’ve had “mild” COVID and never knew. The day worker who didn’t want to be quarantined without a paid leave. Francis and I were lucky we could afford to hole up at home with the kids. We could afford to be “responsible” and feel good about not infecting anyone else. The rest had no choice but to just mask up and go.
Tomorrow, we’re going out for a walk. For a quick trip to the market, laundry shop, the bank. Francis is thinking about reopening his barbecue takeout, thinking about whether to let regular customers know why he’d been closed for two weeks.
Two years into the pandemic, we’ve known that many of us could be walking around asymptomatic, that even the vaccinated could infect others, that we might’ve caught COVID already but never felt it, never knew it. We’ve been told that the most protective mindset is to assume that everybody’s got COVID, that we ourselves have COVID, so we better mask up and socially distance. But with Omicron actually blurring the lines between the flu and COVID, we’ve entered the stage where COVID felt more omnipresent, more infectious, than ever.
It’s 2022. But it feels like 2020 all over again, with the novelty gone and the weariness gnawing at our bones.
I’ll mask up like a survivor of what I’ll just presume I had. Who is to say, anyway, that I haven’t caught the virus way before, even if, say, what I had two weeks ago was just the flu? Now, I see everyone as survivors, too, whether they’ve had the virus or not, because who exactly knows for sure, unless you’ve been testing regularly these past two pandemic years? I’m close friends with a popular actress who’s had her nose swabbed every two weeks, before and after locked-in tapings. I can’t imagine being in her place, my nose swabbed that often — but at least she knows for sure that she’s never, ever, had the virus.
For the rest of us, well, it’s guesswork.