Quarantine Diaries

It is a Sunday morning. I wake up lazily around 8.30 am (which is two hours later than my usual), not sleep deprived and groggy for a change. A relaxed breakfast with the husband over discussions about the morning news followed by some chores and on to cooking a typical Sunday lunch of mutton curry and rice, which compels us to give in to the temptation of an afternoon siesta. The evening is spent enjoying some me-time – reading or calling up friends and family. Sounds like any usual Sunday, doesn’t it? Not for us. This, is something I haven’t been able to do (with or without Covid-19 wreaking havoc worldwide) for the longest time.

For those who don’t know me, I and my husband are doctors currently working in Kerala. We moved here around 7 months ago from Assam for my husband’s three year superspeciality course. What with him being a first year DM resident and me working as an Assistant Professor in a medical college here, we both hardly get any time to spend with each other. The days begin early and he gets back home usually late night, exhausted beyond words. And the cycle goes on and on, irrespective of Sundays, public holidays, festival, curfews, strikes or chakka bandhs. Until Covid-19 happened.

We both are currently in the middle of a two week quarantine together at home. The fact that we can afford to wake up at 8am (or even later) instead of 6am, that we can have our meals together, that I can speak to my friends over the phone without being interrupted by a call from a resident posted in  the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, that I can cook something I may have been craving, that I do not move about looking like a zombie thanks to sleep deprivation, that I can enjoy a quiet evening reading a book or listening to some nice music while talking about anything and everything with him- these are luxuries that have been unknown to us. And not just us- this is what it is like for most doctors.

Doctors usually spend their days like machines at work, literally. Crazy neverending shifts, the stress of multiple critical patients and just not enough doctors and staff on the floor to manage them, phone calls from home hurriedly taken and finished with reassuring our families that we will get back to them once we get off work, administrative hassles, examining your god- knows-what- number patient of the day at the very end of your 14 hour shift trying to convince him that it is just gas and that he most definitely isn’t dying of a heart attack  – this is what any average day for us is like. What’s worse that for most residents, there is no concept of a Sunday, a week off  or  even any public holiday as such- making them overworked, exasperated and fatigued in equal measures. That the pay is laughable is just the cherry on top.     

Worlwide, health workers are being hailed as heroes for the work they have been doing in these troubled times. We have had anxious friends and family checking up on us for the past couple of months making sure we are okay, more so since Kerala was where it all started in India. Many healthworkers have lost their lives in this global crisis, and my heart goes out to their families. But, this blogpost isn’t really about these heroes. Infact, it isn’t about anything remotely heroic.  It is simply my realisation on a Sunday spent doing regular stuff at home that it took a pandemic of such massive proportions for doctors like me to be able to spend a (somewhat) normal life, even if it is just for a couple of weeks.