My friends and COVID
A year into the pandemic, I am still dismayed by the anti-maskers and the people who say COVID-19 is a hoax. As of this writing, I have seen posts on my social media by three friends who have been infected with COVID-19. One is on her way out of the hospital, another is in isolation at home, waiting for an ambulance to take her to an isolation facility as I write this. The third friend is a classmate from college who now has a nearly P1 million hospital bill to contend with so he can be discharged from the hospital.
Ellen
Let’s start with my friend and colleague, Ellen. She tested positive for COVID and was brought to a quarantine and COVID-care facility in Las Pinas City. On March 7, before she was brought to that facility, she posted on her Facebook Timeline that “if I hadn’t gotten sick, I would not know how many people love me and care.” She also said in that post that “I’m still home alone, but I’m expecting a medical team to get me, anytime, for isolation. So I’m preparing my not so big ‘maleta’ for my things. This is a mega vacation in an isolation facility for 1–2 weeks maybe?”
Ellen is part of the working press, so she added that “I will make sure to stay busy during the quarantine period. The work goes on. Let’s do this. I will fight you, COVID. Let’s see.”
Her Timeline posts between that day and yesterday were mainly TikTok and YouTube videos, and this post from eight hours ago: “It is kind of sad because they told me I’m going to be released from cell #33… hahaha. Thank you Lord. Thank you, everyone, for your prayers.”
And, right after that, she posted: “Good news, the doctor in charge in the isolation [facility] called up: ‘Congrats, your x-ray result is normal… so you count 2–3 more days, then you can go home.’ Thank you Lord, even if this is overstaying.”
Carol
My friend Carol, on the other hand, is just getting warmed up. She’d been feeling unwell for days, and was isolating and, when she did need to leave her room, she sanitized everything she touched. On March 19, she put a post on Facebook that goes like this: “My dream was to be positive for a pregnancy test, but because I seem to be really unlucky, it was the swab test that came out positive. It’s so unfair, I said I wanted a baby girl!”
Carol went from working as a journalist to working in a city government public information office, and I did meet her on the beat, years ago. That lady is a pistol, and then some. On March 20, she wrote about what it was like to be in isolation: “It is hot in isolation. My armpits got immediately sweaty, never mind that I’d just taken a bath. Oh my Lord, I have to put up with 10 more days of this. That’s if I get a clearance quickly. The barangay hasn’t been by yet. They just had me fill up an information sheet via text [messaging] the other day. I’ve called the CESU twice, yesterday and a while ago, and they asked me the same questions. Insane. My housemate’s swabbing will have to wait until next week yet. My poor housemate may get a clearance at the same time I will. My Lord. Sorry, friend!”
On March 21, Carol made a funny post, but the humor is wry: “How bored am I? Last night, because I couldn’t sleep, I entertained myself by scaring the mice that were brisk-walking on the neighbor’s roof! It was fun watching them jump when I’d rattle the windows.”
On March 22 Carol posted this: “My 6th day of quarantine, and only a contact tracer has been by. Still just a contact tracer?! I am done with the contact tracing. My Lord. Haha. I am a public servant, somehow I understand that the COVID cases are overwhelming, but it is infuriating that we are located across the barangay hall but haven’t been visited, even just to check on us. What is this, should I just inform them when I’ve completed the 14 days of mandatory quarantine so we can go out now?”
Yesterday afternoon, she began feeling worse: “My chest suddenly felt heavy, like there was something weighing it down. I have a clogged nose. This damn COVID. The animal seems to be challenging me. I’ve had to do steam inhalation in the wee hours. There was slight relief of my nasal congestion. I’m still feeling out this heaviness in my chest. Dammit. I don’t like this kind of feeling.”
She got the go-ahead to proceed to a hospital just a few hours ago: “All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go….coz I’m leaving on an ambu, don’t know when I’ll be back again. Oh babe, I hate to go!!” That’s the Carol I know — she’ll use humor to ease a difficult situation and keep her spirits up. “Thank you to everyone who helped facilitate my visa. I’m fit to travel to [the hospital] tomorrow. Hihihi.”
She also thanked the people who facilitated the swabbing of her housemate: “That wasn’t my housemate’s dream, but they’ve finally given my housemate a poke!”
Abraham
The most heart-wrenching set of COVID posts from people I know personally, however, is Abraham Chanco’s post, and he’s asked me to help him spread his story of battling severe COVID in a Marikina City hospital.
Abraham was my college classmate, the good dude who was pretty much the polar opposite to bad girl me. I used to arrive at our 7 a.m. history classes still drunker than a beluga whale and wincing from the sunlight. It was Abraham who’d raise a hand to recite and buy me some time to regain composure (if not sobriety) so I could answer the history professor who hated me and would, invariably, try to find enough reason to fail me by calling a graded recitation or a stand-and-deliver pop quiz. I made good marks in World History thanks to Abraham buying me enough time to sober up a bit and remember the history texts I’s studied while imbibing.
Abraham sent me, and his other friends, emails requesting a repost of his COVID journey. It opened with this: “First of all, I would like to thank all of the friends, family, classmates, batch mates, my sister’s classmates, FB friends and workmates who have offered their prayers for me during my days with COVID. Rest assured that your prayers have borne me up in the darkest deepest times of despair of COVID. It has served as the long, thin, but unbreakable, lifeline to God that has allowed me to stubbornly choose, cling to life and hope, rather than let go and let myself fall into death and despair. Your many prayers have many a times saved me. Take heart my friends.”
He opens his story on Facebook this way: “Hi Folks, just thought of giving you an update of my 28th day vacation here at the luxurious Marikina Valley Med Center, courtesy of course of COVID and sweet Diabetes 2. Early warning: long read. But please do read on as you might find it interesting or even learn a lesson or two.
“For the first 10 days of my stay at MVMC [Marikina Valley Medical Center] hotel I was alone. My wife has [our] six-month old baby girl stuck at the teat (breast fed), three-year old toddler and 11-year old son. And of course I was COVID-suspect (at the time), I didn’t want to infect her. So great, I am to spend my vacation alone, just my lone self.
“Standard, of course, when you get wheeled into your swanky COVID isolation suite, you get your very own IV bag and your own ventilator, which comes complementary with 1 or 2 five-foot oxygen tanks (similar to the huge LPG tanks you find in industrial kitchens). In those early days, I so loved those tanks. I’d go through 12 to 18 of them on a daily basis.
“I was staying on the 6th floor then: COVID isolation ward. All my neighbors had O2 tanks! And can you imagine how many tall burly PPE-clad technician would manually deliver them and, with a huge adjustable wrench, manually change in your tank? 1 or 2. I can’t imagine how they manage, and I think they run on a 12hr shift!”
I know Abraham as a cheerful man, one who was always an upbeat and doughty soul. But his story goes on from sarcasm to irony, then on to sadness and despair before it mellows into gratitude.
He continues to describe his “breath-taking stay” at MVMC this way: “So, for the first 10 days at MVMC everyday was breath-taking. Lovely! How it goes: The room has no nurse bell but you have a room phone. As soon as you hear the oxygen machine alarm, that means it has low oxygen, you’re supposed to pick up the phone. I do that: [My] panic and wheezing starting… lucky me, no dial tone. I slam the phone. After five seconds (still wheezing) I pick up the phone, same thing: No dial tone. I wheeze some more, but feeling more like Freddie Krueger is squeezing my neck (joy!), I pick up the phone, wow dial tone, scramble in the three-digit extension to the nurse station: Nurse, wheeze, room (gasp) 6..0..0..6. Please change the tank. Wheeze. Nurse: ‘Oh, all right, sir. Please wait.’”
Please. Wait. For oxygen. I read that and wanted to yell at someone. So I took deep breaths and kept on reading Abraham’s story and read about him having to wait for more than oxygen tank changes: He’d gotten too weak to walk to the bathroom in his hospital room at some point, so a porta-potty chair was put in his hospital room. The process of cleaning the commode was just as much of an agonizing wait as getting his O2 tank changed. That thing was literally stinking his room up to the point that the fumes made breathing more difficult for him, though he couldn’t smell them, and created more health complications for Abraham. So he was put on a condom catheter and adult diapers. To save whatever was left of his health. The catheter didn’t work too well: He wound up waking up marinated in his own pee.
“I was too exhausted to call in the nurse. Or, at other times I would call in, but still spend two to four hours lying on wet bedding and clothes. My prayer then to the Lord was: “Help me to be a patient patient. I know my nurses all care for COVID patients and their workload is much more toxic and stressful.”
Abraham’s story includes seeing the angel he calls wife arrive at his hospital room: “One midday, a PPE-clad nurse came in to my room with several bags. When she took off her mask and spoke, it was my wife. What a great lift to my spirits!
“Because the condom catheter resulted in everyday changes of beddings, the nurse decided to put me in adult diapers and I was given laxative. My commode was taken away. But because my food was low-salt diabetic food, the vegetables did not have any taste at all, I could hardly touch it. The rice was dry and coarse. It was just a half cup, but I could only eat a spoonful or two, most often none. Meat was mostly big hunks of tough pork or dry, tastleless chunks of chicken. This diet resulted in severe constipation and to such discomfort I could not sleep. It’s just so difficult to take a dump lying down w a diaper (I wonder how our baby so easily does it). Every night would be an agony for me, I would be reduced to praying ‘Lord help me take a dump’ in sweat and tears. Hours would go by until I could pass my stool in utter exhaustion, 30 minutes to get my breath to normal, but finally euphoric after that herculean task. Then my wife would wipe my ass and change my diapers. I have no dignity. I am reduced to being a baby.”
The cost to Abraham’s dignity was not the only stressor he had to contend with while locked in battle with COVID: “About the 23rd day, with my hospital billing reaching almost a million [pesos] and my relatives arguing to switch me to a cheaper hospital, it dawned on me that, up to then, twice or thrice a day I would struggle with my breath. But never once did He cut my breath! I realized He’s not yet done with my life and that it must be worth more than a million to Him, even ten million, even a hundred million!”
Abraham’s parents named my friend very aptly. He shows the faith of the Biblical patriarch, truly. That faith was answered through a message to his wife, Abraham wrote: “She just got a text from DSWD to return in five days to pick up a check to the hospital for about six figures. And the miracles continue on as of this writing.
“My point here is, although I am a creature who makes a mess of his food, can’t wipe his own ass, can’t breathe properly, can’t take a dump on his own, but relies on Gods mercy… and yet every day, every moment, He sends me His angels (friends, relatives, classmates, acquaintances, neighbors, all upholding me in prayer, sending in their generous offerings, from the heart, in varying amounts. I am truly unworthy and humbled. I am but a babe and my Father is raising my ransom to get out of this hospital.”
Faith, humor, grit
These three friends of mine all show the faith, humor and grit I wish I had. They’re all such good people who don’t deserve to go through the horror that is COVID.
Their stories, which are still in progress, show more than just the human toll this pandemic has on a world that is still trying to grasp how to beat the pandemic. It shows me where the systems are over-burdened, how ill-prepared we all are to face something as terrible as this. Yet, ready or not, these people I call my friends have risen to their challenges.
Bad girl or not, I’m praying very hard for these people who deserve so much better than to be stricken ill with a disease that no one yet fully understands. I don’t think I’m the kind of person who would fit the profile of piety, but, for what it’s worth, I pray for them.
I pray for this country where the government’s action to stem the tide of contagion isn’t doing much. I pray for the people out there who are in my shoes: Watching loved ones who are sick with COVID from afar, and hoping mightily that they will pull through.
Then I wonder, with the evil me surfacing for air, why the people who make up the kakistocracy that is the Philippine government are still so damn blind to all but their own political conveniences. And I want to slap them silly with a metal chair — but that’s illegal, so I won’t.
It’s been a difficult year, and these stories I just shared with you make it even more difficult for me not to hurt the feelings of the people who deny that COVID exists. These stories make my tongue that much sharper when I see people gallivanting about with their masks on as chin-straps instead of properly placed over their noses and mouths.
I’m breathing deeply now, trying to channel the goodness of these friends and praying that all the infirmities of the public health system, and government in general, will be remedied by the 2022 elections — because those things sure aren’t getting remedied now. Oh, no. That incompetent health secretary is still the health secretary, despite his poor performance, and government is still feeling its way blindly through all the debts we’ve racked up as a nation, unable to even think of coherent and viable ways of beating this pandemic.
I focus, and, like my friends, hold on to hope — but I will keep reminding people about the harsh lessons we’ve been dealt: We need to do better, as a people and as a nation. We need to choose better, and hold government to account. We need to look at where the systems and people in power have failed, and find ways to make sure they fix those things — then replace the incompetents at the soonest possible time.
