BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

(bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt)

Shar­da Kel­ly froze on the phone when she re­ceived that March 29, call with the words: “You have test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19,” com­ing from the voice of her coun­ty med­ical of­fi­cer on the oth­er end.

There were no words she could have put to her feel­ing to de­scribe what that news did to her, she tells Guardian Me­dia.

Al­ready hav­ing a com­pro­mised im­mune sys­tem hav­ing been di­ag­nosed with the au­toim­mune ill­ness—lu­pus, Kel­ly was wrecked, be­liev­ing it could eas­i­ly be­come her end.

When she was picked up at her home that evening, all the way to the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal, Kel­ly asked her­self was this a dream.

Days pri­or, on March 18, Kel­ly re­calls de­vel­op­ing a cough which sub­se­quent­ly be­came per­sis­tent. By March 24, a bad sore throat fol­lowed. The cough be­came so dread­ful that Kel­ly would throw up; evening chills, headaches, and even­tu­al­ly a bit of re­stric­tion when breath­ing, now al­so ac­com­pa­nied these symp­toms. By March 26, Kel­ly says, all the symp­toms wors­ened.

Over­come with wor­ry, the 47-year-old moth­er of four, reached out to a rel­a­tive work­ing in the health sec­tor, ex­plain­ing her symp­toms. The rel­a­tive re­ferred her con­cerns to a doc­tor who ad­vised she should vis­it the hos­pi­tal to get test­ed.

Kel­ly told Guardian Me­dia, she and her fam­i­ly had trav­eled to Ve­gas on Car­ni­val Sat­ur­day ear­li­er this year and they re­turned to T&T on Feb­ru­ary 27.

“We took all pre­cau­tions. At the time we trav­eled the virus was on­ly an­nounced in Chi­na,” Kel­ly ex­plains.

She says they were even about to can­cel their reser­va­tions with the ho­tel and air­line but were told by per­son­nel, there were no trav­el re­stric­tions on their des­ti­na­tion, nor was it known of any COVID-19 cas­es there.

“Even the day be­fore we trav­eled we called and in­quired again and were told the same,” Kel­ly re­calls.

Up­on the fam­i­ly’s re­turn, they passed tem­per­a­ture ex­am­i­na­tions by health of­fi­cials, com­ing through the air­port. Kel­ly says, she went straight home and re­mained there as was her prac­tice pri­or to her trav­el—a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure she took in light of her health con­di­tion which she was pre­vi­ous­ly warned by her doc­tor, made her more vul­ner­a­ble to com­pli­ca­tions should she at­tract the virus.

How­ev­er, on March 9, Kel­ly and a few mem­bers of her fam­i­ly vis­it­ed a de­part­ment store. Again, on March 11, she did some gro­cery shop­ping and on the fol­low­ing day, March 12, she vis­it­ed a bak­ing in­sti­tu­tion.

On the doc­tor’s pre­vi­ous ad­vice, to vis­it the hos­pi­tal, fol­low­ing her in­creased symp­toms, Kel­ly vis­it­ed the Mt Hope Hos­pi­tal on March 27 where her vi­tals were checked, symp­toms list­ed and a swab test ad­min­is­tered for COVID-19, af­ter she told them of her then trav­el his­to­ry and her health con­di­tion.

She re­calls al­so be­ing giv­en a chest x-ray and then told by doc­tors she had to re­main in quar­an­tine at the hos­pi­tal.

At 2 am on March 28, Kel­ly was re­leased and sent home with the ad­vice to self-quar­an­tine. She says she fol­lowed in­struc­tions to a T and stayed in her bed­room at home. She was ex­pect­ed to get the re­sults with­in 48 hours.

The phone call she re­ceived on March 29, would shat­ter her. In the most sur­re­al mo­ment, Kel­ly be­came one of T&T’s COVID-19 pos­i­tive cas­es.

“Hav­ing read all the scary sto­ries of peo­ple who died from the virus, I was just be­side my­self. I thought, this could be the end for me,” Kel­ly sighs.

At the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal, a self-em­ployed Kel­ly was as­signed to a bed in a room with three oth­er COVID-19 pa­tients. It was found, she had al­so de­vel­oped a lung in­fec­tion which she says was treat­ed im­me­di­ate­ly with an­tibi­otics and plaque­nil—a med­ica­tion for lu­pus, Kel­ly was al­ready tak­ing.

It must have been the third day of her hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion, when Kel­ly says she be­gan vom­it­ing again and hav­ing chills.

“I re­mem­ber I al­most faint­ed be­cause I was vom­it­ing so much. The nurs­es came and helped me back to my bed. See­ing my con­di­tion, they want­ed to trans­fer me to ward two—the High De­pen­den­cy Unit (HDU),” Kel­ly re­counts.

How­ev­er, it was not a unit Kel­ly want­ed to will­ing­ly go. She un­der­stood that could mean some­thing of a worst-case sce­nario. As such, she plead­ed with her at­tend­ing doc­tors to al­low her to stay. They oblig­ed on one con­di­tion—Kel­ly’s vi­tals had to im­prove.

Her bed­mates al­so gave doc­tors the as­sur­ance; they would look af­ter their new friend.

These bed­mates, Kel­ly now calls fam­i­ly, she says were her source of strength, and the bond they all cre­at­ed has last­ed be­yond her re­lease on Wednes­day.

But the en­cour­age­ment to fight to get well did not on­ly come from her hos­pi­tal friends, but Kel­ly says had it al­so not been for the kind doc­tors and nurs­es who pro­vid­ed dai­ly coun­sel and in­spi­ra­tion, her men­tal state would not be some-what sta­ble to­day.

“I re­mem­ber my broth­er and hus­band brought stuff for me. From my room, I could have seen the high­way head­ing south, and see­ing them leave, I just broke down, be­cause it was hard. We could not have vis­i­tors. Even though I could talk to them on Face­time and what not, not be­ing able to talk to them in per­son was not the same. It was hard,” a cry­ing Kel­ly laments.

She says it was one of her bed­mates and the nurs­es who came in and con­soled her, as­sur­ing her it would all be over soon.

“The treat­ment and the sup­port is what kept me go­ing. I am sor­ry about that, it’s still fresh,” Kel­ly mum­bles through sobs.

Asked what was her biggest les­son learned dur­ing her ex­pe­ri­ence she says out­right­ly, the im­por­tance of fam­i­ly.

“One day you are well and the next you don’t know what life holds and what chal­lenges you have to face. But with the sup­port from my fam­i­ly, friends, nurs­es, doc­tors, and my bed­mates, you learn to ap­pre­ci­ate life and the peo­ple around you more.”

Al­though Kel­ly is back home now, she tells Guardian Me­dia, she is on sev­en days quar­an­tine and she was bat­tling a bit of de­pres­sion.

“Some days when I lie down and I think of my ex­pe­ri­ence, I be­come so emo­tion­al and I can­not stop cry­ing. I am so lucky be­cause of the eight peo­ple who died; their fam­i­lies could not even see their bod­ies to get some clo­sure. I think of­ten, what if that were me, what would hap­pen to my fam­i­ly,” Kel­ly pon­ders.

While she urged the pub­lic to take the virus se­ri­ous­ly and ad­here to all safe­ty mea­sures, Kel­ly al­so had a mes­sage for those who have demon­strat­ed in­sen­si­tiv­i­ties to peo­ple who have con­tract­ed the virus and the fam­i­lies of those peo­ple.

Speak­ing from ex­pe­ri­ence she re­veals, her fam­i­ly was treat­ed bad­ly and shunned by res­i­dents of the vil­lage in which she lives. She says the most un­kind words were spo­ken.

“The pub­lic needs to un­der­stand what we were go­ing through phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly, they need to be more hu­man about it. This is some­thing that can hap­pen to any­one. We are not ask­ing for sym­pa­thy but un­der­stand­ing. It is not an ill­ness any­one asks for.”