I’ve been so careful, surely I can’t catch Covid-19?
Coronavirus. It is a word that I’ve spoken, written down and worried about for more than half a year now. But in truth it has always been an abstract idea. I knew that there was a deadly pandemic all around us, it is quite hard to escape that fact after all.
Yet it hasn’t seemed to be something real or tangible. Until this week at least.
I think the first time I wrote about coronavirus for the Portsmouth News was in late January, back when it was a small outbreak in a Chinese city that I had never heard about before.
Over time it has consumed my work life – constantly updating lists of cases, deaths, infection rates and now lockdown tiers.
But the virus itself had not touched my real life. Despite living with two NHS workers, we had seemingly managed to escape the clutches of the virus.
Then the other day I woke up and coughed. At first I thought nothing of it, it seemed to just be an innocent cough.
I was off work, so I leisurely went about my morning. But then I coughed again and throughout that morning I caught myself coughing ever more frequently.
I remember jokingly thinking to myself ‘oh I must have coronavirus’ and shaking it off. But the coughing did not go away and I felt myself deteriorating, my body becoming achy and a bit weaker.
Trying to sleep I found myself struggling to catch my breath on a couple of occasions and then combined with worried thoughts about coronavirus bouncing about my brain it made drifting off quite a struggle.
By the time the alarm rolled around the next morning, I knew something was wrong. It might be Covid-19 or it could just be a seasonal virus, but I didn’t feel right.
I waited a few more hours before booking a coronavirus test, hoping the cough would go away and fearing the consequences for my housemates if it didn’t. The guilt that they would also be stranded at home possibly for two weeks.
A few hours later I was walking to Eldon car park, mask on and feeling surprisingly short of breath and taking the Covid test. So now I’m left anxiously waiting for the results.