Diary of an Omicron patient

Recovery is slow - when you least expect it, your body starts ghosting you.

So, the thing about the latest variant is that it has the makings of an urban legend. It's nothing, goes one school of thought; better to get it and get it over with, says another; no need to woo it, go the doctors. Mask up, stay home, don’t marry right now even if Mr Right is dancing on your doorstep… The advice comes thick and fast. But for some people Covid climbed up their nostril just because they were breathing.

This time round, since the panic is missing as it is no longer seen as fatal, everyone is a medical expert. The advisers can be divided into those who got it and those who didn’t. The latter calls up mostly out of curiosity: how are you now, they text, and after five minutes they text again, ‘And now?’… You are their personal lab rat, their guinea pig. You feel like a horse they are betting on and the race has begun, tick tock. All you have to do is stay alive. And, oh yes, give them cheery updates. You are Covid's PRO.

Those who already had it get more autobiographical. They treat you as a diary, pouring in minute details. ‘For me,’ they start with a nostalgic sigh, ‘it happened like this.’ From the person they suspect they got it from to the person they hope to give it to, nothing is left out of this hastily compiled memoir.

Your doorstep soon resembles a shrine. Things start collecting there: thermometer, oximeter, crocin, vitamin C, zinc tablets, betadine mouthwash, cough syrups and all the food you are ordering in anyway. Once your olfactory senses die, eating itself is a Last Supper kind of event, except no one will paint you for posterity.

As I bid adieu to the variant, I too take stock, like so many before me. I was more surprised than suffering at the start. It baffles me how the virus found me. I was indoors, binging on Netflix. So it began as a whodunnit. Who gave this to me, who? Not bad, was my next phase. Early quarantine I woke up examining my own symptoms with utmost attention, mainly to broadcast to mother who hovered outside my closed door as if I had departed for another country without telling her. Self-isolation drove me to true crime documentaries where I hope I have picked up practical tips for any future homicide I happen to plan.

Then the advice stage set in. Everything I thought I knew about this virus was downright wrong. ‘Drink,’ my friends said, adding ‘water’ disappointingly.

But this virus really knows how to kiss goodbye. From the time I tested negative, dizzy spells and brain fog are constant companions. And when you least expect it, your body starts ghosting you. Of course, by now well-wishers have moved on, with fresh cases to monitor, and mother starts to cough so you can hear.

You are texting people that you are not too fine and they say, yeah, yeah, it takes time, what did you expect?