This week I finally recovered from coronavirus. With such good spirits, I decided to go to the local clinic to get tested for antibodies. Finally, I would get to know if this evil is truly over and whether I can return to normalcy.
Later that day, I returned to the clinic to get the results, absolutely certain that the physician would emerge, declare that I had recovered, tear the mask off my face, and send me back to life. But when I got there, the receptionist called out my name and handed me a sheet of paper.
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"What does this say?," I asked her.
"It says you had the coronavirus. That's all that's known right now," she said in her bureaucratic correctness that is so typical of North America. On my way back home, the mask covered the disappointment on my face.
My corona ordeal was not on the same scale as the "pandemic of the century" headlines you would see in the papers.
My girlfriend and I contracted the virus while visiting friends. Five days later, everyone became sick with fever, coughing and shortness of breath. That is, everyone except myself.
Because my health did not deteriorate and I could stand on my two feet, I volunteered to go get tested. The results came back positive and my body began to brace for the worst. Every morning I would wake up worrying that my body temperature would rise, that the stinging feeling in my throat would become an uncontrollable cough and that my back pain, which is caused by my long hours lying in bed, would spread to other organs. But each morning it turned out that it had not.
The only physical symptom I could feel was the loss of my sense of smell and taste. A day after my girlfriend told me she could not smell the lavender soap, I chewed on an apple. I could have just as well-chewed with passion on a soap.
I could not tell it was eating fruit, I only felt the texture: a crunchy object and a bit of sickness. Rather than eat cheese, I felt I was eating a bland viscous cube.
Only rice with soy sauce could trigger some reaction in my taste buds. This is the secret to monosodium glutamate's true wonder: The ultimate flavor enhancer doesn't just provide taste but also the sense of taste.
With ambulance sirens wailing on the roads and a floating hospital docked near Manhattan, I felt that I was just doing nothing. There was a great disparity between the rising number of dead and my awakening tongue. My body had something hidden that lacked any impact on me, but for many it was lethal.
The irony did not end there. This week, my week of recovery, was the 75th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. This year, the Red Square did not have marches and a memorial service. The calm and uncertainty may be better than the pomp and circumstance. VE-Day was not the end of the war, but in New York the masses celebrated in 1945 even though the war continued in Japan and led to the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Celebrating the revival is designed to put an emphasis on the fact that the virus has been defeated. But the collective sigh of relief may never come. Even the so-called return to normalcy is a yearning for a past that will not return.
As for myself, my recovery was on par with my sickness: I did not feel good nor bad, and therefore I did not feel a sense of relief. I am healthy, but I cannot inoculate anyone. Many like me will get sick and die. But experts have hypothesized that the virus sears the immune system in a way that will produce future antibodies. So perhaps the lethargic, drama-free feeling is better. Perhaps I do not need a victory parade. I remember the pandemic because it is seared into my body forever.
