My Covid Diary- Part 2

In my earlier post, I covered few generic guidelines based on my experience. This post is about tips for Self isolation and quarantine. Hope you find it useful.

As shown in the graphics, your end goal is to get the Negative RT-PCR report before your end of isolation period. Considering the current healthcare facilities status, it is the best thing to get recovered at home. Here are some DO's and DON'Ts

DO's

• Be Positive- There are many reasons of being positive like- 99% patients recover, you are still with your family and in familiar home setup etc..etc.
• Give constant support and encouragement to your family- This helps in reducing their anxiety levels. e.g. I used to talk to my parents, in-laws, kids every single day to tell them that I am fine.
• Take ample rest- This is as important as medicines. Switch off your alarm clocks, sleep as much as you can. Start reading something tough (like- k8s security) and you will feel sleepy. :-)
• Stay Strong- Do not think that being covid positive means you are going to die soon. This kind of thought goes against your body's recovery. Keep on saying to yourself that it is one small thing and I will be alright. Trust your doctor, medicines, well wishes, blessings and above everything GOD.
• Keep your Doctor updated- Talk to your doctor once a day or atleast keep in touch on other platforms like- whatsapp, tell about any new symptoms that you develop or things that improved from yesterday or any observations from SpO2/pulse/fever monitoring etc. This will help him/her to decide next course of action.
• Be ready to handle emotional moments- For family specially small kids, it is very difficult to stay away from their parents. e.g. On my first day of isolation, my 3 years old cried for more than half an hour as he wanted me to help him sleep. It was very tough to see such thing happening in next room but you need to stick to your rules to save them from infection. Another example is birthday of my kid happened to be on next day when I tested positive and due to quarantine, I could not even hug my kid and cut cake with him but we ensured to celebrate with cake cutting and I was clapping from 20 ft away from them. Going alone to hospital for HRCT or other tests is another such moment. Be ready to handle such things and remember this too shall pass.
• Be in a room with ample sunlight and cross ventilation- Doctor recommends to spend 10-15 min. a day in sunlight and also have ample air ventilation. It's ok if there is no direct sunlight in your room, Don't go out to get sunlight.
• Spend time in things that give you peace of mind- e.g. listening to your favourite songs, watching cricket, watching movies, reading books, doing Yoga etc.

DON'Ts

• Stress yourself- I have noticed that symptoms like tiredness immediately increase if you are stressed. So do not stress yourself at all. Keep all your career, job, money or anything else related worries aside.
• Take this disease lightly- Follow all the medication, doctor's advise on food, monitoring etc as in no time, things become worse. Your primary goal is to take care of yourself so do it religiously.
• Miss your medicine schedule- At one point of time, you will be asked to take several medicines and do other things like- take steams, do gargles, monitoring etc..and it becomes difficult to remember and track it. I create a simple table on a plain paper where I used to write and mark as soon as something is done. This was very helpful for tracking everything. Remember nobody can come inside your room so you have to do it yourself.
• Watch too much negative news- To get TRP, all news channel are focusing only on negative news and it does more harm when you are covid positive. My advise here would be do not keep watching such news channel. if you can't live without news than watch ZeeNews, they have decided to take different approach and they show content with useful information.
• Plan for certification exam- All said and done, certification exams do bring anxiety and stress due to so many reasons so do not plan to do any certification exam and unnecessarily stress your body's recovery.
• Hesitate to refer to more than one doctor- It's perfectly alright to take second opinion to be sure that you aren't missing anything.
• Hesitate in doing extra tests- It's ok to spend some extra money for doing some repeat tests after a given interval say after 1 week. It will bring peace of mind and much needed confidence.
• Isolate yourself in true sense- While it is must to isolate your body from others but don't isolate yourself from others. Keep talking to your friends/family/colleagues so that they give you required motivation.

With this, I have reached towards the end of this article. thanks for reading it and sharing it with others who might find it useful. Please do share your feedback.

Stay safe and stay healthy!!!.