CORONAVIRUS What is it like having coronavirus? Think ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’
ing. It isn’t quite like when I’ve been feverish before. I had swine flu once and that was horrible — I could barely totter to the bathroom on wobbly legs and I ate almost nothing for four days (I come from a family in which the gap between ‘second breakfast’ and ‘lunch’ would lead to declarations of “I’ve got low blood sugar — I must eat!”). My calm, grown-up self (admittedly a very minor character on the stage of my life, usually sitting in the wings, sighing or muttering, “Well, you handled that badly…”) reminds me that I’m almost certainly exaggerating. I’m a tiny bit prone to paranoia. And I have a very over-active imagination. True, but I’m not a hypochondriac, really not. When I had a tumour in my kidney, I somehow managed to overlook the symptoms. They only found it by chance as I had a scan for suspected gallstones. The radiologist said he’d have a “quick look round” while he was there. And then he suddenly stopped speaking and I knew there was a problem. That’s how it feels now. I know. I am very, very scared. Despite the lone kidney, I don’t think I’m in a high-risk group. I don’t have a heart condition or asthma or diabetes. I’m under 60 (56 — though fairly confident I can pass for 55 in a dim light). But all my life, I have been prone to very bad colds, when I get one, it’s hard to shake it off. My immune system might be all right in theory, but what if — like me — it’s prone to inertia? What if its default setting is also not Work but Lying on the Sofa with a book and a glass of wine?
Morning. I’ve had the fever all night. I decide to isolate myself, staying in my bedroom and study upstairs and eating on a tray there or — for sociability and to avoid spilling hot soup over myself in bed — on the half-landing. Then I can chat with Larry and Leo in the kitchen, even though I can’t see them. This isolation system I manage to maintain for four hours. I have no idea how it can be done in a small house without everyone going crazy.
Over the next week (I told you I was ahead), my temperature remains high, fluctuating, but never returning to normal. I have other symptoms ‘I spent time in the garden — not weeding, just being’
— muscle aches, shortness of breath on exercise, tightness in my chest — but all mild.
And then I get a cough. It’s a dry cough, so chokes any last thought that I might just be imagining the whole thing.
In the meantime, confined to barracks, I do my morning exercises in the sitting-room, and spend time in the garden — not weeding, not rebuking myself for failing to plant this or tidy that, just being. I sit on the bench with a cup of hot ginger tea (fresh chopped ginger root, steeped in boiling water for 10 mins, add teaspoon of honey). I watch the goldfinches waiting their turn to get at the black nyjer seed (it’s like crack to them, but see how patiently they wait! They are the good citizens of the avian world). On the peanut feeder, deliberately distanced on the other side of the garden, the parakeets bully other birds out of the way (they are the stockpilers, clearly), greedily grabbing all they can. The buds are fattening up on the apple tree. Puffy cherry blossom plumes over the hedge. A pale narcissus gives its final flutter. Above, the sky is clear and bright and free of planes. I breathe deeply. I drink my tea. Life is sweet. For now.
@clairecalman
The Invasion of the Body Snatchers
My calm, grown-up self reminds me that I am exaggerating’