‘LACK OF EMPATHY LEFT HER TRAUMATISED’

GURUGRAM:Last week, she stepped out of home for the first time in two months.

She had gone out for a walk with her best pal, her dog Champagne, after spending days in isolation at hospital and home. It felt blissful till she had to cut short the walk when she realised every passerby in her society was peering through her, as if they knew she was the first Covid-19 patient of Gurugram, and Haryana.

“Though I was wearing a mask, I felt people were scared of me,” says the 26-year-old, who requested anonymity.

“It affected me when the media reported that I had run away from the civil hospital. I had only been shifted to a private hospital after consultation with doctors. My contact details were leaked on WhatsApp groups. My parents and I got calls from unknown numbers. A man even posed as a policeman and entered our house! Nothing can be more traumatising,” she says, recalling the days after she tested positive.

A resident of Sector 9 who works as a marketing professional with an IT company in Gurugram, she says, “People lack empathy. Rather than being concerned about what I was going through after contracting a disease that’s new to the world, neighbours were more concerned about their own well-being.”

SUFFERED ANXIETY ATTACK

The news and social media made her anxious. “After suffering an anxiety attack, I decided to disconnect from everyone. I focused only on my office work while I was admitted in the isolation ward,” she said.

She was so scared that she quarantined herself for a month at home after being discharged. “It was a conscious decision as my three-month-old nephew stays with us.”

While in isolation, she relied on her mother who kept her strong mentally and physically.

Today, she is back pursuing her hobbies of cooking, playing with her nephew and taking Champagne out for a walk.

TIME WILL HEAL

She understands that getting back to normalcy will take time. She is still to figure out how she contracted the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

On February 22, she had gone for a vacation to Malaysia and Indonesia along with her cousin and returned on March 4.

She had fever and cold on March 11 and got herself tested the next day only to be diagnosed positive for coronavirus on March 15.

“Now I ask everyone to wear a mask and practise hand hygiene because one never knows how one gets infected,” she says.

The last two months have changed her, for the better. “I’m more patient and concerned about others struggling with the virus,” she says.