It’s day 30 of quarantine. I arrived home from London on March 13th to hear Francois Legault, Quebec’s premier, urge us to self-isolate if we had recently been to Europe. On the 11th, in Covent Garden, my husband and I had had lunch with my stem cell donor — hours of storytelling followed by several goodbye hugs. On the 12th, unbeknownst to us, William was rushed to hospital in an ambulance with breathing issues. On that day in William’s town, one hour north of London, there was no coronavirus test administered, and he and his husband, Michael, were sent home. The UK, due to Boris Johnson’s early dismissal of the contagion, was complacent. Such irony. It was business as usual in the shops and restaurants. Oddly neither William nor Michael could smell or taste, but that side effect had yet to be added to the Covid-19 symptom list.
Meanwhile, back in Canada I was coughing and sneezing and had developed a migraine. No biggy. My life has been one long cold since I received my new stem cells in 2016. My lungs took a bit of a hit. My bones too but I’m not complaining.
I’ve had pneumonia twice, and an assortment of issues to deal with the fallout from chemotherapy. I’m here. Everyone else in my cohort died.
Ten days later William, my donor, called to “check-in.” A few hours after the call, I was in the queue near Place des Arts asking to be tested. Such efficiency! I gave my story, or rather William’s, and was green-lighted for the test, which took ten minutes start to finish. I estimated 200 people were operating the test site. It felt very “Margaret Atwood.” It was surreal when gowned, gloved and masked medical personnel silently beckoned us into an enormous white tent. There was a hush inside, a certain gravitas that belied the number of people administering the nose swabs. I was escorted back to my car by a young police officer.
Six days later I received an email. Negative. I do feel I dodged a bullet. (Sorry to Elise Moser, for the cliché.) Along with the elderly, I was, (past tense), considered to be in the category of high risk. It has taken a pandemic to realize I have a healthy immune system and can expect to receive a letter from the PMO when I turn 100.
As it turns out this biological virus is also a social virus. Very apparent is the inequality, the greedy selfishness of our materialistic society that undervalues human life and overvalues commodities. Say nothing of the way we have injured our planet in our need to replace instead of re-use. Because of forced factory shut-down, the Himalayas can be seen from 200 miles away, a view not witnessed in decades. The air is cleaner the world over. My fear is that we will not be able to sustain these lavish positive changes. My fear is that we have not been punished long enough as we hear that the European curve is flattening, that Wuhan is open, that a slackening of social distancing will happen sooner than later.
Perhaps we should assume that we have all died. Ironically, it’s Easter weekend. Maybe this Sunday we will all rise from the dead with a new perspective on what is really important. Human life. Dignity. Fairness. The poor and marginalized, the mentally ill have a right to be heard. Social justice over consumerism.