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Stay positive, urge COVID-19 survivors


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Stay positive, urge COVID-19 survivors

author-deafault.pngSidharth Yadav
BHOPAL , APRIL 05, 2020 22:06 IST
UPDATED: APRIL 05, 2020 22:06 IST
 
 

MP-COVID-19-recovery-2

 

A father-daughter duo are the first patients declared free of the virus in Bhopal

Thirteen days have flown past for Gunjan Saxena, Bhopal’s first COVID-19 patient and also the first to recover from it in Madhya Pradesh.

Along with her father in the isolation ward of AIIMs, Bhopal, Ms. Saxena barely had the time to ponder over the cough, cold and breathlessness that felt like the symptoms of any other viral infection, as more than 50 friends called and kept in touch every day.

A typical day for Ms. Saxena, a student of masters in international business law in London, began when she was woken up at 8.30 a.m. to her get vitals checked. Then she read the Rigveda and spent an hour or so in prayer. Then came the calls to friends. Some reading followed till friends in the U.K called her up in the afternoon. Later, she chatted with her mother and brother. Then came course lectures through video conferencing till she went to bed at round midnight.

After testing positive on March 22, she was sure of being cured. “Given my age, I was sure of being cured. But I was anxious about my parents being worried for me,” says Ms. Saxena, 26.

However, shifting to a different location and the isolation was more daunting for Ms. Saxena, who had barely spent more than 14 hours in a room before, than the infection itself. “The disease is not as fatal as the hysteria surrounding it, the psychological trauma stemming from it,” she says.

The novel coronavirus infection offered her the novel experience of briefly losing the sense of smell and taste too.

But when her father, 62, tested positive on March 25, she was crestfallen. “I was ridden with guilt. For 24 hours I shut myself from everyone, from my friends. I had nothing to say to them,” she says.

A veteran journalist for 25 years, K.K. Saxena had attended the March 20 press conference where then Congress Chief Minister Kamal Nath announced his resignation. Mr. Saxena’s routine visits to the Raj Bhavan and Vidhan Sabha over the next few weeks, before his COVID-19 status was confirmed, resulted in journalists, officials and Congress MLAs going into home quarantine.

The father and the daughter, the only occupants in the ward having four beds set in corners, lent each other support.

It was at 8.30 p.m. on April 3 when the doctors finally declared the two coronavirus-free.

Ms. Saxena credits her recovery to positive attitude, peace of mind, enough sleep and “giving the body a chance to recover.” For her father, it was confidence, and his habit of reading for an hour before going to bed, a ritual the virus failed to disrupt.

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