CROSS-CHANNEL CORONA

One family’s experience of what we can only assume is COVID-19

By Jane Mayger

AN UNWANTED COMPANION

My husband came back from London to the Paris suburbs on Friday evening over three weeks ago. Unbeknown to him at the time, our very own family super spreader had crossed the channel. My daughter was left behind in her flat in London and I now visualise the virus multiplying there as well as here.

On Saturday, I noticed Andrew’s dry intermittent cough which he dismissed as normal so we carried on. The next day, he was overcome with exhaustion and went to the guest room where he collapsed in a daze for a couple of days. Two of his colleagues called in sick on Monday with the same symptoms.*

After perhaps 2-3 days of this slight, initially unacknowledged dry cough, the fever and exhaustion arrived quite suddenly. For 36 hours, Andrew couldn’t work at all or even watch Netflix, but he began to feel a bit better in time for me to go down. I took every precaution – every time I removed plates or glasses from his sick room I washed my hands and I disinfected every handle, every surface, over and over.

MORE THAN A COLD

I first had a sore feeling at the back of my throat, then a slight, dry cough, but the wave of collapse came quickly. For 24 hours I also lay in bed, iPad at the ready, but had no energy to watch anything. I drifted in and out of sleep, sometimes hot but not burning up. My shoulder, hip and arm ached pretty badly. My eyes felt swollen. My head felt clear but I was too exhausted to think. And throughout there was this odd, not particularly distressing, completely dry little cough.

On the second afternoon I felt well enough to get up for a few hours. I congratulated myself on my impressive immune system and smiled in the sunshine thinking – “Well, that’s over, we’re through it.” My daughter in London was coughing down the phone (in self-isolation) but no fever. My twelve-year-old son was coughing and being a pain about his schooling from home in the Paris suburbs, but again, no fever – the joys of youth. I agreed to play some games in the garden and croquet snookered me – forgive the metaphor. The exhaustion came back, I couldn’t keep going, so retreated to bed for more aching and sleeping and sweating.

A TURN FOR THE BETTER

But here I am now, typing and thinking straight. I’ve managed a game of monopoly without a relapse and am clear-headed enough to get back to worrying about what’s happening. Though the symptoms varied, all of us had the same dry cough and sore throat. We noticed that food lost some of its taste yet we didn’t lose our appetites, just our enjoyment of eating. Both of us had sore, puffy eyes and ached deeply in our bones and joints. Strange aches. My chest felt tight for a while. From Andrew walking through the door it took 4 days for me to get it.

So that’s my corona story – or is it, who knows, none of us have been tested. It seems ironic that the virus came to call on us in a country in lockdown from a country that still wasn’t. Here, as in the UK, the sun is shining and it’s hard to believe what is going on silently under this quiet, sunny surface. We’re now on our fifth week of isolation at home. Lovely friends have bought bread and milk to the gate, and the food is holding up. Good luck and stay safe.

*We now know 40 people from Andrew’s office – 10 percent – were off sick at the time.