“Mutual assistance has been established between people”

“I started to feel severe aches in my legs and back during the night of Wednesday to Thursday, the first week of confinement. It woke me up. I wondered what was going on, it never happened to me. I felt like we were pulling on my muscles. I felt more and more tired, but it was still fine. On Saturday, I lost my sense of smell and taste and the next day, I felt cold, but above all really very tired. It made me weird. I called my doctor on Tuesday and saw these symptoms, especially the loss of taste and smell, and confirmed that it was Covid-19.

“I couldn’t do anything but sleep”

I had no fever, cough, or even severe breathing difficulties, although I felt a weight on the rib cage and needed to catch my breath a little when I spoke. I felt immense fatigue: I got up to prepare food for my 11-year-old daughter, to eat (because if I no longer had any taste, I still had an appetite) but I immediately returned sleep. I had no strength, I could do nothing but sleep. I was in the same state of fatigue and weakness as if I had a fever. This is what is misleading: the first days you tell yourself that you have caught a cold. Especially at the start, we associated the virus with a cough and fever, which I didn’t have.

We watched documentaries, made a pie, but I slept the rest of the time. Fortunately, my daughter had absolutely nothing. I limited contact with her to the maximum to protect her, even if we live together, I cleaned everything that we both touched and we aired every day. She is creative and manual, so she takes a lot of care, she even sewed me a mask with several layers of fabric. She impresses me (laughs). She reassured me, told me it was okay. I was lucky that she was tall, even if … I had the balls that I couldn’t take care of her anymore.

“We are even closer to each other”

The teacher sends us a weekly file of exercises and homework, a detailed work plan, so I helped her at first, but afterwards when I was so bad, she organized herself. Sometimes she calls her friends to review as a group. This also raises the question: how do parents who do not have computer equipment do it? In his school, the principal loaned tablets to parents who did not have a computer, but how are the others doing? Finally, that’s fine, but the school holidays may be more difficult: the children will have 15 days without homework, they will have to be occupied. Fortunately, I find that a lot of cultural things have been put in place, including virtual visits to museums.

We have a yard where she can do jump rope, she calls my brother every day to do contests. This is the advantage of this health crisis: we are even closer to each other. I have a WhatsApp group with my family, we chat every day. I heard from people I had known nothing about for years. Relatives dropped off fruit and vegetables for us. Mutual assistance was established between people.

Some around me had a fever, a severe cough and were forced to move doctors, so don’t complain because even if I had covid-19, I had ‘a nice shape’ … ”

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