South Africa: Covid Played the Long Game and Got Me, At Last, As My Worst Fears Came True

By Ismail Lagardien

Three weeks ago, I visited a multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) and HIV medical facility. I was wary and paranoid, as I always am around viral diseases. I did not shake hands with patients, as I always do. I breathed into a kerchief. You see, I know, always, ever since childhood, years before doctors cut up my left lung and removed half of it, when I have 'caught' something.

My body is dragged to bed, over and again. I have difficulty breathing. My heart is racing then slowing down. Temperature rising, falling. My arms are too heavy to lift. My gaze is blurry. I can't focus on anything. I keep singing random passages from Robbie Robertson's Crazy River.

I was feeling like a stranger in a strange land/You know, where people play games with the night/God, it was too hot to sleep.../You fog the mind, you stir the soul/I can't find no control.../I been spellbound/Falling in trances/You give the shivers/Chills and fever/I been spellbound/Somewhere down the crazy river.

I went down almost three weeks ago. It wouldn't go away. Liquids and pills. More tests. Last week the results came out - SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) was detected.

The past three weeks are something of a blur. My hearing shuts down several times a day. I have no cough, just listlessness. Tiredness. I fainted once or twice - or three times. Too scared to drive to the shops for bread because of faint spells. The last time, I walked to the shops for bread. A wild baboon and its family grabbed my shopping bags. The idea of living in my village is...

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