When all this started, like many of my peers I thought. It’s just a different kind of cold.
I have Ugandan blood and received the BCG vaccine as a child, I am immune. Corona has nothing on me. I decried the lockdowns, hated what they did to the business and then I got sick. Well, a sore throat, fever and just general malaise, in my mind was just fatigue after an 8-hour drive.
I thought, “I will beat that in 2 days.” At day 5 I thought, “Must be malaria,” so I went for a test that was negative and even did a CBC that I went ahead to google analyze (Only benefit, I now know what MCV, MCH, MCHC mean). At that point, I was getting to day 8 and everything was only getting worse, and I was getting tired of binging on paracetamol.
Night sweats, fever, chest pain when I lay down, I thought, “This must be that flu from 2012.” I remembered I was prescribed azithromycin, so went to the pharmacy and got some. This seemed to help, probably just a placebo effect because that same night It all came back. I was sick. So I started to think, what could this be, not malaria, nothing on the CBC, not that flu from 2012, the WebMb symptom checker, as usual, gave me all sorts of options like Hodgkin’s disease. Then a light bulb moment. This could be Corona, we actually laughed a little about the idea.
So I took the test after 12 days of extreme pain, it wasn’t Hodgkin’s disease, It was COVID-19. It was rather shocking to learn, but what bothered me, even more, is how dismissive I had been. Corona took 27 days of my life, I got lucky and beat it, however, I learnt a couple of lessons.
1. Wear your mask in public places. It is less painful than COVID-19
2. The thermometers at the entrance of public places will not help you much. Wear your mask and social distance.
3. If you feel sick, take a test, maybe better to find out early.
4. Shots of garlic, turmeric, lemon and ginger taste disgusting but apparently help.
5. Not everything is malaria.
6. I like paracetamol.
7. I don’t want to catch Covid-19 again, I will ear my mask, actually bought a 10 pack of the guy on the street.
8. Lastly apparently Corona is not like chickenpox and you can catch it again.
9. I am happy to be alive, the business and many other things can and will be fixed.
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