I am not generally a superstitious person. Do not eat while standing, you will marry far from home. My people by that standard should not have any hors d’oeuvres at swanky events where there are no seats. Do not whistle at night. You are calling the devil. Do not tell tales during the day, you will sprout a nail on your sit upon. Do not seat with your legs crossed, your mother will become restless. Do not eat in the dark, or ghosts will come for their share. I laugh in the face of all these warnings. Even the more modern ones, like if I watch Man United wearing a certain t-shirt sitting in a certain spot they always win, I sneer at. No sitting or attire could have saved them last season.

Yet sometimes a bolt of fear passes in my belly when I think about some things. A year ago to the date today is when Mamouse (this is my beau’s spy name if you have not been reading this since the start) fell violently ill with what we would later learn was covid. The day before he had had a very specific kind of virtual meeting with his office while he was working from home. 

Yesterday he had an exactly identical kind of meeting and when we realized the date, we looked at each other and burst into laughter because we realized the similarity to the exact same date last year. For a moment I asked myself what if. What if we had to live that nightmare again! Then I gathered my wits quickly and realized that scary as it was, it will not necessarily happen again. My brain is protesting being caught unaware last time and overcompensating by preparing for disasters that are not coming.

The only reason I know this is because I believe for the better. I have faith that when the foundations are shaken I have someone I can run to and be safe. I know that because I have made the Lord my dwelling place, even the Most High my refuge, no danger will befall me. The waters will rise but not engulf me. I will walk through fire and not be burnt.  My faith is strengthened because we did go through some pretty scary stuff, and we lived to tell the story.

All said and done, the only superstition I entertain is that if my palms itch I will get a lot of money. Then again my palms never seem to itch so I might never know whether that one works. Believe your beliefs and doubt your doubts, as long as they harm no one because they admittedly bring some spice to life. Be careful though, because only truth stands the test of time and experiments like mine.  I wish you a well- reasoned life. Kaari Here.

Take a deep breath. Literally. If I can oversimplify what just happened, I would say air entered your nose, where it was warmed to body temperature and moistened. Any particles were filtered out by the hairs in your nose and some were caught by the mucus along the way. The air passed your trachea, the bronchi and bronchioles into your lungs, which consist of thousands of small air sacs where the absorption of oxygen into the blood happens. If there were any irritants in the air, your system might have sensed it and you might have coughed or sneezed to forcefully expel them. It is way more intricate than this, it is amazing how quickly it happens as a rhythm to sustain life, taking in oxygen and removing carbon ii oxide.

If you catch a respiratory infection, the beautiful rhythm is interrupted. For example with covid, the virus binds with your cell and replicates inside, giving enough viral load to be transmitted in aerosols coming from your mouth and nose to the environment. That is how someone else catches it. If you are lucky, as it goes into your cells the defence mechanism senses it. Fever kicks in to make the virus uncomfortable and reduce its survival and replication. You get a dry cough to force out the invaders. You may feel sickly and tired as your immune system fights and possibly redirects energy and other resources. Then you win against the virus.

If you are not so fortunate, this first battle is not won, so the body escalates the fight. The infected cells produce inflammatory markers in an effort to destroy the virus, which might escalate to the cells basically destroying themselves. This turns into severe covid, which manifests in what they call glass lung- serious destruction of lung cells by the disease, so very few remain functional. This is what causes respiratory distress, the inability to breathe like you normally would. This means you need supplementary oxygen because the lungs are not able to do the gaseous exchange as normal.  With covid, the inflammation can travel to other organs, especially in people with other co-morbidities. Again, this is a radical oversimplification of what really happens.

With such an understanding, every breath feels like a gift, and every moment lived is cherished like a privilege. As I waited for Mamouse to come home, spreading his favourite sheets and fussing about every little detail like he likes to, we needed a home-based care provider. I called MOH and they advised that that was offered from the hospital one was treated in. the one he was leaving was less than ideal but we had few choices. We would engage the doctor and a nurse from there before we learned about a fully-fledged home-based care service in the neighbourhood. That was a relief.

On the evening that the nurse accompanied him home, with several other hands, one carrying the oxygen tank, one holding him up, one with a chair so he would sit every few steps and another for moral support, it felt like the end of the journey with Covid. Our neighbours passed us with mouths agape, wondering what was going on. But I remember the palpable excitement. If he was coming home, it meant he was very well now and would be completely healed in no time. They really did not seem to get it.

The walk from the carpark to our door that takes about a minute or two on a normal day took almost thirty, but I did not care. He was home. When he called a few people to let them know, they did not catch our excitement. Probably the tubes were scary in their eyes. It did not matter.

Now I could breathe in deeply and relax. He was in my care and I would do all I could so that he was well. In a few days he would be off oxygen and breathing on his own. Right?

In primary school, the first thing the PE teacher would say when we reached the field was just to breathe in and out. I never really understood why then, but I do now. I no longer take it for granted. Breathe in and hold it for a moment. Exhale slowly. Appreciate how your chest cavity fills up and releases gently. That is a gift. Kaari Here.

PS: I wonder why we seem unbothered when they say the earth’s lungs, the Amazon Forest, is being destroyed at an alarming rate. God help us!

The doctor in the new place was very youthful, in her second year of residency. But that did not set her far apart from all other doctors in the world. With covid, they were all learning on the job, as we had observed even in other hospitals and every medical association had testified. She had a day job in one of these hospitals they talk about and would come to see Mamouse and consult for other patients when she was off the clock there. The first few days she did as her colleagues in the hospital had done. She monitored for any changes or signs of deterioration. She treated every symptom as it came and we were confident she was doing all she could. We were content.

There was a great nurse who was attentive and kind, then there was another who was oblivious, sometimes outright rude. She was spoiling the name of good nurses. There was a kind patient attendant and there were other people I just passed in the corridor and did not pay attention to, safe for greetings. There was another person who was our point man and possibly the radiographer. I never really knew what he was. What I know is that he took Mamouse to get an x-ray and forced him to walk all the way without any physical support or supplementary oxygen, which at this point was essential. He fell to the ground, his body unable to function. He did not even help him up, as if it was a military drill. Then he pretended it did not happen, thinking he was not lucid enough to tell what happened. He let him fall and did not even physically uphold him!

I learnt what had happened and was so angry that the man who will do anything for other people, who does all he can to help those who need it, was in his time of need and the people he was paying good money to take care of him did not do all they could. I was angry that they could have let him get hurt and said nothing. I was angry that they were seemingly using him to test their not so cool machine, and the films they produced were still terrible and unusable. I was angry and hurt they kept the fall from me because accidents do happen, but when they are covered up it looks like malice and no longer accidents.

With time other things started to bother us. They would not clean the room, for example. Sometimes I would have to get the mop and clean it myself because I knew Mamouse needed a good environment if he was to feel better. But that was not a big deal. It was only cleaning.

By this time the intravenous medications had become so many that all the injection sites in both his wrists had formed scar tissue. Once I was in the room while a nurse was trying to find a new one, and it hurt so much that my insides turned. It hurt me even if I was not the subject. She even had to call her colleague for backup. I went outside to cry, feeling helpless and distraught. I wanted this to end. I wanted his suffering to end and for him to be well again and not need people prodding him with needles. But it seemed the heavy medication he was under had diminished his senses. He did not seem to be in much pain, and that to me was not a good sign. When you stop feeling, whether pain or joy or sadness or restraint, there is a big problem. Not feeling physical pain at all is a great danger because your body has no way to warn you that something is wrong.

There seemed to be other wars we were not privy to. The doctor would write her treatment plan in the chart and leave it with the nurses to implement. But while she was away, during different shifts, the nurses would do as they liked. One would increase the level of oxygen, then another would lower it arbitrarily. They would play around with it so much that the plan to gradually wean him off would start over and over again and never really bear fruit. They gave him medications every hour and then reduced them to once every two hours, but they kept playing with the oxygen.

When we did speak with the doctor, she was as frustrated as we were, and at a loss as we were. The plan was not working because there were different people pulling in different directions. I think at last she gave up and decided since there was nothing new she was doing to treat him, she might as well release him to recuperate from home.

We were happy that that day had finally come, and because we were going to do better than the nursing staff, and I say this with a generous pinch of salt, things would look up shortly. They even gave us enough time to buy all the medical equipment we needed and for all the preparations we needed to make for Mamouse to come home and rest. He would be under our watch all the time and we would protect him from the staff and their stuff. Some of their behavior made me wonder why anyone would go into a profession they are not interested in. You can tell a good doctor from their behavior even when they are having a bad day. Think back and see your teachers. You can tell who wanted to be there and who was forced by circumstances. Why do we commit to things we do not want to be doing? A line of the Hippocratic oath that medics take say to first, do no harm. even if they are unwilling or unable to help, they should just leave you be, not make matters worse. Kaari Here.

The stay in the neighbourhood hospital was the longest and the toughest for us both. We really longed for each other because somehow he was so close, yet so far away. They promised us heaven and earth. They did deliver a lot of earth and not so much heaven, as humans are limited to. Sometimes we even got a little hell too, but our greatest feeling was relief. We were out off the place that was costing a lot of money and giving very little feedback. Here the covid precautions were very lax. I got to see him just as I was, without wearing all the PPE gear that could not save me anyway because I was already infected. I also did not have to wait for a rushed fifteen minutes to see him, which helped even if he just sat and looked at me with empty eyes when he was not asleep.

 The hospital bed and mattress were pretty new, so very uncomfortable. The light was so bright it was disorienting. It was super cold but for that, we just brought a blanket from home and warm clothes. The food runs were loads of pressure too.

 I wanted to give him the best of everything, but that did not always have the desired effect. There was a day I fed him pineapple and it chewed him up so badly he now had terrible sores in the mouth and on the lips. It showed all the more what state he was in because he would have pineapple every so often previously.

I was also fighting my own battles, which I was hesitant to share with him. I would sit with him so I cut really close to curfew, and then I would go home to sleepless nights. It was cold and empty, but it was also scary to sleep. I would be in terrible fear at night, and when I did manage to fall asleep I would suddenly be jolted in a cold sweat, terrified of nothing in particular. My limbs would have no strength and I would feel like I was falling, with nothing to hold on to. The fear was paralysing. 

It was easier for me to stay up than sleep, sometimes I found myself making popcorn at 2 am just so I wouldn’t have to lie down and contemplate the situation. I escaped by watching boring tv shows or scrolling social media, but the moment I turned off the gadgets the anxiety would come back. 

Conversations were hard because I could hear the pity in people’s voices. I did not want to be pitied because it drowned me in self-pity. My heart broke for Mamouse, but I did not want to pity him. I would sleep a little at his bedside during the day and sometimes escape home to try to sleep some so my body would not give in. I guess it was because of this pressure that the health challenges I had had previously returned. Now I could not even go in to follow up because of the virus that I did not want to share with people in the waiting room or people who attended to me. I called the hospital to get the test results and all the doctor who delivered them to me could say was that she would pray with me. They had found nothing of concern in the tests. That did not stop the symptoms from returning with a vengeance and pushing me to experiment with home remedies, which helped. 

Even though we were not alone, were were often very lonely. I felt myself lose the confidence I had had because our expectations that he would be there only a few days then come home did not come to pass. I risked losing my faith because somehow all the truth I knew in my heart did not seem to win over my mind. There was what I believed, then there was what I knew. In this time I got all sorts of explanations for why it was taking so long. Some people thought someone was bewitching him, and although they were being ridiculous I could not tell them as much. I got so many home remedies. Herbs, vegetables, spices, oils and pellets that I was assured that just one try and he would be all better because other people had used them and they were well now. I recognised we were like a drowning man, and all these people, out of love, were extending every straw they could in the hope that it would be our salvation. I did not even touch some because I knew they were like snake oil. 

What I really appreciated was those who were praying for us, and they were many. Our church community, our friends, our family were all praying. New things to think or believe were not an option for me. I went back to the prayers I prayed as a child and the notes I wrote as I studied the word and found an unchanging God. He was still where he has always been. The assurances he had made to me about simple things were still there. I saw many prayers that had been answered. Even if I had scattered my brain and poisoned it with fear and anxiety, the promises were still the same. He had known this would happen. He had allowed it. He was with me in every minute and every moment. What could I do than hold on to what had proven true in all the journeys I had taken, big or small? I the process of reminding myself what I was forgoing, I found this song about Egypt

‘Cause You stepped into my Egypt
And You took me by the hand
You marched me out in freedom
Into the promised land
Now I will not forget You, God
I’ll sing of all You’ve done
Death is swallowed up forever
By the fury of Your love

Sometimes things like these make me wonder what the Egyptians think when they hear stories like those of the Exodus , and I hope they understand we don’t really mean them any malice with the metaphor. We would be getting out of there soon enough, not by power, but by a sea-splitting miracle. I started praying from victory that was won for me. The circumstances did not change. But my perspective was what needed changing. Kaari Here.