Corona Diaries - 1

I’ve been away from blogging for such a long time, I wondered whether I would get another opportunity to blog. I never had enough time really; also hospital life does get tedious at times and I never thought I had much to say. Could this be the perfect opportunity to start writing again? I definitely have the time now. What could I possible call this? The Corona Diaries? My COVID-19 journey? I’ll think about it. I’ll probably never publish this. This might be something I find in later years and laugh at or cry about. Whatever happens, I’m grateful for this experience, all that I have learnt and all that I will learn. God gives us as much as we can handle, never more, never less and I know for a fact that I will definitely get through this.

So here we go…

Let me start at the very beginning. Remember when life was normal? Remember when we had morning meetings and could walk out across the road to our favourite Starbucks and sit in our veranda? I miss those days. They were simple at times and hectic at others. I’ll start when corona started becoming an important bug. It must have been sometime early February when I started reading up about it extensively. It started becoming a big issue in China and there was the princess cruise ship that was infected that no country agreed to have it dock in. I started reading the WHO daily reports wondering if it would ever reach us. Cases were in the south east Area region and it wasn’t a pandemic yet. I remember telling my friends that corona was coming and its scary and nobody used to pay much attention to that. During that time, we still didn’t have any cases in Kuwait.

So China was going through hell, while here we were in Kuwait chilling and living our days as we normally do. I would read the numbers daily and would sometimes share them with my friends. People started getting concerned when it hit Italy. Italy had originally said to treat it as a normal flu until all their elderly started dying, the health service collapsed and mortality reached 12% at times. Kuwait started to raise awareness during this time and I became obsessed with reading the WHO reports daily and waiting for them until 11:30 at night to be released before I would fall asleep, given the obsessive personality I have, that was quite normal.

Then the planes from Iran started arriving, originally 2 planes arrived and the passengers were advised for home quarantine. The third plane arrived and those were quarantined in one of the hotels and that’s where it all started. There were only a couple of cases from the third quarantined plane and things were manageable. Slight restrictions were placed for the home quarantine patients however rarely do people actually adhere to rules. I remember being so frightened at times that I refused to go anywhere apart from work, I stopped going to the gym and started becoming lazy however I couldn’t risk becoming infected. I was never concerned about my own health; it was mostly fear for giving it to my family and my patients. My brother had been the model citizen during this time, he’s a teacher and therefore did not leave the house at all apart from the two times he was making sure his car worked fine. My father’s only trips were to the supermarkets and even then, I kind of forced him to wear an N95 mask and gloves.

Two weeks later, when the number of cases started to become more or less contained, I made an appointment with my personal trainer and decided to go to the gym. I had become active over the past couple of years and hated having this sedentary lifestyle. I wore my surgical mask and headed to my gym in 360. I was astonished that I couldn’t find a single parking spot, even on the roof. It took me around 20 minutes to find a spot. I headed to my gym, all the while praying that I wouldn’t catch anything, I had my Dettol wipes and was wearing gloves. I changed into my clothes and as I was heading to warm up, heard a shocking sentence.

“Yes we’re in home quarantine, we still have 5 days left and the doctors come daily to check our temperature and we’ll get our swabs repeated soon.” 

She was casually saying this to her friend as she filled her water bottle. I looked up at her shocked and informed the gym administration that she was in violation of home quarantine and was walking around the gym casually. I couldn’t concentrate on working out and headed home in fear. I realised at this moment that home quarantine would never be an option for some people. They will lie and manipulate and would never adhere to protocol, thinking that it’s fun to get away with such things. Never thinking about any consequences.

I headed home one night after a busy shift and missed my usual turn being preoccupied speaking to the ward about a sickie. I was using bluetooth connected to my car speakers and wasn’t holding my phone in case anyone was wondering. So, I missed my turn and headed down the gulf road until I reached the next stop. Only then did I remember that I never go down this road at night. It’s a road that is referred to in Kuwait as “Love Street”, something I only came to know a couple of years ago, having spent my teenage years in the UK. The amount of cars I found on the road and the amount of boys and girls of all ages astonished me. This was all after people were advised to stay at home and not to leave the house unless absolutely necessary. People were driving around aimlessly with no point, just for the sake of leaving the house. The image frustrated me to my core; when will people start to get it?

Cases increased until partial curfews were implemented, everyone was advised not to work and schools were closed. Some were scared and actually started staying at home and raising awareness, however others found different ways to fight the system. Fashionistas had home weddings instead of big fancy hotel weddings, people started filling up the streets an hour before the curfew for runs; people who have certainly never been athletic before. Hair salons and barbers were offering home services. Supermarkets were still open and restaurants were all still delivering. Mosques and places of worship were closed. Mecca closed to visitors. Can you think of anything more terrifying? People were not allowed to go to the house of God for worship. The idea shocked me and every time they said “Pray in your own houses” after prayers, I would get goosebumps.

The numbers of cases increased daily however they were still within the number manageable by our healthcare services. They started pulling doctors from every department to cover quarantine areas and hotels. Flights were still operating and they took a large group of doctors to cover swabbing these passengers. The flights stopped, the airport was closed and were advised to be in partial shutdown for 2 weeks. Malls were closed, only supermarkets and pharmacies remained open. Do you think that stopped people? Not really. They continued going out between 4am until minutes before 5pm. People were going out because they were bored, they were still having home gatherings. They always find way to fight the system. That is sort of human nature I guess, to fight and try to find the limit. 

Nearly all ministries were closed apart for the ministry of health and the police and army. People were encouraged to stay at home, they still did not listen. Our work changed to oncall basis; we were going daily to work however would leave as soon as rounds were over. We were careful to limit patient contact and always wear the personal protective gear that was available to us in the wards, which are surgical masks and gloves. Gowns were available for isolation patients only and I have never seen a face shield or goggles apart from on the doctors that were on TV taking swabs from people. COVID-19 teams were created in all hospitals and Amiri was one of them. Those were specific doctors that followed suspected cases and took swabs from them. Before that, there was no system really for who was expected to swab patients to see them. Given that these were exceptional circumstances, the rules were changing continuously and we always had to adapt to change. We started getting positive patients and they were transferred with care to Jaber Hospital.

Little did I know, I myself would be an inpatient one day.