All he wanted was his daily newspaper and, maybe, someone to talk to.
By Dr. Shriya Raina
For a study on COVID-19 undertaken by the Public Health Foundation of India and the National Centre for Disease Control, I was asked to collect travel and contact history – over the phone – from virus-infected patients at Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi. Truth be told, I was reluctant to call my first patient as I assumed that he would not be cooperative. There was a high likelihood that he may have already lost his patience, repeating the same details to health officials over the last few days.
So, you can imagine my surprise when the telephonic conversation actually turned out to be a rather willing and participative one! The middle-aged gentleman, who lived in Ghaziabad with his wife and son, seemed more than happy to talk. He told me about his visit to Iran on work, how he went to several local markets there and returned to India after a week.
On his arrival, he experienced mild fever and body pain, for which he sought medical care from a clinic near his residence. The prescribed antibiotics and antipyretics made him feel better – though only for a couple of days. He had to seek medical attention again when his condition worsened. And the laboratory test reports confirmed COVID-19 infection.
Soon, he was moved to an isolation facility in Safdarjung Hospital. When we spoke, it had been four days since he had moved there and he was awaiting the reports of his wife and son, who were quarantined at home. It didn’t take any prodding for the man in isolation to confess that he missed his family.
The loneliness was getting to him. He wasn’t allowed to speak much on the phone, his room had no television, and the nursing staff attending to him spoke a different language, making conversations difficult. He had nothing to do all day, adding to the restlessness. If only he could do some work, he sighed!
“Can you please talk to your seniors and help me get a newspaper daily? At least, I can read for some part of the day,” he requested at the end of our conversation. I couldn’t help but empathise. It made me think of how all of us are focusing on keeping people away as a means of self-protection, without sparing any thought for how it must make them feel.
