In India, we all believed that Covid would be over by 2021, literally like on January 1st, at dawn with the sun’s first light, Covid will burn into ashes, like Puffff gone in the thin air kind of gone. And to be honest, January till March felt that way; it was like anything like Corona ever existed in the world. When Shikha (my wife) and I plan to go on a long-awaited getaway to Rajashtan for three days, and that was great, we went there, and we had a fantastic experience there for three days: no work, no schedule to follow, no responsibilities to full fill. But we overlooked the Covid situation, and like all working class, we thought and saving some money and to travel by any guesses…………… TRAIN. But it could be anything we could have got it in the Jaipur city Palace or in the Cafe we had breakfast in or in the hostel we stayed in, who to blame than us we were just downright ignorant. So, when we returned for a day or two, everything was OK with us, but then Shikha experienced a slight fever. We thought it was due to tiredness of travelling and all, and we just did what we all Indians do Paracetamol and tada magic. Her fever was gone. We thought maybe it was due to tiredness, but the following day her smell was gone, so was her taste, and we couldn’t delay it, and we got her RTPCR done and quarantined our self till the results were out. And as the blog is about my covid journey, it was apparent the test result was positive. So we quarantined in the same apartment but in different rooms. But the 2021 COVID, as you all know by now, was meaner and hungrier. If this virus would swamp one family member, that was for sure a couple of more will get infected, but luckily in our case, it was just me who got affected, and our parents were safe from it.

After six days, I showed my first symptom and was down with high fever, and this time even the saviour household knight Combiflame was defenceless. After two days of fever and 3 doses of Dolo 650, the big brother of Crocin, my fever was gone, but that was not the only thing that went also gone were senses of taste and smell. After being quarantined for more than 25 days in our house and our parents bringing us food and all the other essentials, there was still one issue waiting for me at the gates. I started to get some severe headache 🤕 for 5 days after trying all the ‘Gharelu Nushkha’, taking migraine pills, nothing seemed to work. It was a wired feeling; it felt like all the mucus as filled up on the left side of my head felt like ballon there, and even my face started to swell, so as all humans would do in this situation, we consulted Google for it. All my symptoms, according to google, were for Sinus infection, so finally, we thought of seeing a doctor. After the checkup and 10 days of eating medicines for breakfast, lunch and dinner, there were no signs of improvement. I was to get a CT scan done for my head and nose 👃 , which revealed sinusitis; in simpler words, there was a lot of mucus in my frontal sinus. So we changed my medication, and for the next 5 days, it was again medicines in breakfast, lunch, dinner, and you know it everything in the middle. Then we got another CT Scan done, and to my excitement, it showed a 60% improvement from my previous report, so we cut down on medicine and hoped that it would heal automatically.

Two days later, someone again inflated the balloons in my sinus, and I guess the swelling started to appear again, and then the doctor and I decided its better to get the surgery done. It was simple surgery of cleaning all my sinuses through endoscopy. And got all my tests and scan done out of which one was an MRI of my head, and man, that was scary and Claustrophobic; for those who have never got an MRI done, I pray you never have to go through it ever, but it was horrifying. So how it works, you lie down on a bed which feels like a regular bed, but then you realise its a monster’s tongue which has these claws kind of things which lock your head so that you can’t move at all and then it slowly starts sucking you into its mouth. And then these wired sounds starts happening; for the first 5 minutes, I felt like I was in a video game with machine guns and fighter planes. And to be honest, till the time sound was playing, it was great, what was killing was the silence, the silence with your eyes shut and your head locked gives you some severe visuals in your head of trapped in a coffin. The most irritating and annoying part was this fan right above my nose; Now imagine you have a head and nose filled with mucus, and you are locked in a place where you can’t move your head in a cold place where the temperature was touching 0 degrees. There is a fan on your face blowing cold, killing air directly on your face. After 20 mins I couldn’t breathe, and I started screaming and asking to shut this whole damn thing, but there were another 15 mins to go in the process to complete, 15 more minutes, 15 fucking eternity, at least it felt that way to me. But somehow, I managed to survive those 15 minutes. I have pulled out. that monstrous machine to realise I have to go through another 20 minutes of torture and infused me with some injection, and back I was in that monster mouth. Still, it was easy the second time as I survived the first 40 minutes of it, and the plus was I asked them to turn off that bloody fan, after which it became easier to stay in that hole. And thanks to all the prayers, all y test reports were normal, and there were no symptoms of mucormycosis. But still, I had to get the surgery done, so we all prepped for it and got admitted to the hospital.

Stay Safe 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼 Stay Home 🏡🏡🏡 and Stay Blessed 🤲🏻🤲🏻🤲🏻