Spitalfields Life

Recent weeks have passed as if in a dream. I have no more memory of the symptoms of the virus now than if the experience had been itself a dream. Yet I know it was real and I count myself fortunate to have survived and to be here writing to you, lucky to have suffered such a mild version of the symptoms that I am able to recount it placidly from the safety of hindsight.

One day, I was feeling low and so I made myself a hot water bottle and went to bed in the afternoon. That night a fever came upon me and my limbs grew loose until the connection between my body and my self became dislocated. My joints ached as if my shoulders and hips were being wrenched apart like a doll. I took a paracetamol tablet and, twisting and turning in my bed, submitted myself to a slumber so deep that I lost my self entirely.

I was awoken by stomach problems, pacing back and forth to the bathroom endlessly through a day, each time drinking water to replace what I had lost until the clear liquid simply ran through my system as if my body no longer had any substance. I felt cold all over and could not shake off the chills. Daylight hurt my eyes and my feet became sensitive and sore. My head ached and I was overcome with a powerful weariness. After taking a rest on the sofa, on rising I found I did not have the strength to walk to my bedroom and had to wait until I could summon the energy to make it back to bed.

When night came again, the fever returned and I took a second paracetamol tablet. By now, I had a shortness of breath and my throat was sore with the loss of my voice. A few years ago, I had pneumonia and learnt the agony of trying to breathe when your cough reverberates so harshly it bruises your ribs. Now I lay in the dark breathing deliberately, slowly and deeply, fearful that the virus was spreading to my lungs. Without appetite and without eating for two days, feeling the irritation in my chest, I drifted into delirium as if I were possessed by an alien spirit. My loss of self was such that I was passively unaware of the degree or severity of my illness, I was completely in the sway of the virus.

Yet I slept through the night and my stomach problems subsided, even if now my torso was wracked by cramps and aches as well as chills. I lay on my back as weak as I ever felt in my life, dozing with heavy limbs.

How thankful I was for a bowl of soup next day which seemed the most delicious I ever had, soothing my sore throat. After that the fever did not return, instead a midnight craving for cheese on toast surprised and uplifted me, even if it was uncomfortable to digest. That night there was deep sleep without fever, but I awoke with conjunctivitis, my left eye sore and scratchy and watery, the discomfort crowding my consciousness.

For a week I dozed through each day and slept all night without recovering any strength. My shortness of breath and loss of voice persisted and I lay filled with silent anxiety over whether these problems might overwhelm me, taking the breath and the life from me entirely. I realised I was adrift and helpless, a mental paralysis accompanied my physical weakness. Time flew away but there was a stasis in which I was not getting any better.

I recall having influenza as a child and lying in semi-delirium for weeks, enjoying the dreamy otherworldly-ness, secure in the knowledge that recovery would arrive. No such consolation was a available to me with the Coronavirus as I lay waiting to discover whether my condition would deteriorate.

As I have done in the past when afflicted with flu, I took the initiative to recover by rising and doing simple tasks, yet they exhausted me. I recognised I was at the mercy of the virus with no choice but to rest and hope. After ten days, my chest cleared, my voice came back, my eye recovered and my body returned to me. A sense of raw emotionalism and vulnerability remain as if a layer of skin has been removed. Repeatedly, I think of what could have been and what so many have suffered, and how many thousands have died.

Two paracetamol tablets were all I took. Several weeks earlier, I read in the newspaper that this was the necessary medication only to discover that chemists had already sold out. In desperation to be prepared, I visited newsagents and found several selling paracetamol at inflated prices but then another, in Harrow Place off Petticoat Lane, who sold me a whole bottle for one pound and twenty pence. I shall be certain to go back to that shop again.

Now I am – at last – recovered, I look back and appreciate my good fortune to have experienced relatively mild symptoms and been in such good health that I could beat the virus. After this, the beauty of the spring with all the plants sprouting green and shining has overwhelmed me with joy. Each morning, I begin my day by watering the garden and, when I step out of the door into the sunlight, I am startled by the new growth since the day before.

Most of all I am grateful that my fear of catching the virus has ebbed and I hope I may even be immune. I want to get an antibody test to find out, but in the meantime I shall continue to take precautions. Even though I am no longer infectious, I do not want to risk spreading it if I were to become reinfected and, above all, I want to be safe.

You may also like to read

So Long, Philip Pittack

So Long, George Gladwell

So Long, Ahmet Kamil

So Long, Stuart Goodman