OPINION: Former Cape Argus Editor Gasant Abarder describes being caught in his own horror movie after testing positive for Covid-19. And it confirmed what he always knew: when it comes to being sick, he is just a big old baby like all guys.
Allow me to badly misquote from Trainspotting - the best movie of all time. “Take the worst bout of flu you’ve ever had, multiply it by a thousand, and you’re still nowhere near it.”
In the original monologue, Ewan McGregor’s drug addicted lead character Mark Renton was of course referring to sexual pleasure, saying it had nothing on the rush heroin gave you.
Renton then goes into a monologue expressing some of the items he needed to come off junk while in a locked room. Pornography, milk of magnesia, fluids and three buckets – “one for urine, one for faeces, one for vomitus”. In quarantine, what is needed is not dissimilar (pornography optional). And like Renton, all I needed was one last hit. His was an opium suppository. Mine, a last cigarette before going into quarantine.
Mid-cold turkey withdrawal, Renton’s bestie Sick Boy arrives at his bedside crunching loudly on a packet of crisps. He proclaims, somewhat hypocritically because Sick Boy was still on the junk, “There’s better things than the needle, Rents. Choose life.”
But I chose life by choosing the needle.
After getting my first Pfizer jab a fortnight before testing positive I was advised to expect mild symptoms. Mild for who? It’s like those massive disclaimers on detergent bottles: “Known to kill 99.9% of germs”. You know, just to cover themselves in case. Or extra strength aspirin. Why go for the regular when you can have extra strength, right?
At 3.39am on Friday morning of August 6 the symptoms arrived. I then knew why this variant was called Delta. As in Delta Force, featuring Chuck Norris. A film in which he dodges about 1 643 bullets, leaves a body count of about 3 000, and kicks ass in a way only old Chuck can. And that was exactly how my legs felt: like Chuck Norris had kicked them a million times. They were gone.
The chills made me contort in a way the young girl Regan, possessed by a demon in The Exorcist, writhed in her bed. At one point, I swear my head did a 360 like Regan. I wanted an exorcist of my own. A priest, imam or rabbi; it didn’t matter. Just praying softly in my ear. I was in the original version of The Exorcist. The one from the ’70s that the apartheid government banned because they weren’t equipped to deal with demonic possession too, right?
The next day was even worse. I was clinging to life and sweating buckets. At one point, I thought I had pissed the bed but the wetness didn’t have that initial lekker, few warm seconds feeling.
The Springboks winning the British & Irish Lions series made me feel heaps better. Now I was convinced that the only relief would be if Morne Steyn (he was in Cape Town anyway) could arrive at my bedside in a hazmat suit and just hold my hand.
My wife tested positive too but characteristically took the symptoms in her stride. Yes, us guys are really babies and Mummy’s boys when we get sick.
But folks, having Covid-19 isn’t lekker. What was lekker was friends arriving at our doorstep bearing embarrassing amounts of goodies. Liezel van der Westhuizen and her partner Mike Fannin, Nawaal and Rheaz Ismail, Ismail and Amara Hoosain and my colleague Umesh Bawa, to name a few. And hundreds of well-wishes from friends and strangers alike.
As is my wont, I took to social media with my affliction and was inundated with advice – good and bad. Take a bath. Don’t take a bath. Put aspirin in ginger beer and heat it. Stay away from aspirin. Sit in the sun. Steam the crap out of your lungs three times a day. Vitamin C for the win.
Apparently, Netflix also has healing powers. Who knew? The one thing I didn’t lose was my sense of smell and taste and I ate – unlike Regan because she projectiled through most of her film – like a man possessed. And neither did I lose my sense of humour, being conscious to keep the mind strong. That oximeter staying in the high 90 percent for oxygen levels kept me going.
I make light of what could have had a very serious or even fatal outcome. Thousands have succumbed, others are hospitalised on ventilators and even more are grieving loved ones. I count myself lucky having overcome the biggest catastrophe of this century thus far.
Forget Sick Boy. There are few things better than the needle right now. If you haven’t and still sitting on the fence, go get your jab. While it can’t stop you from being infected, it can literally save your life if you get Covid-19. Stay mild!
* Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column on Cape {town} Etc.
* The views expressed here are not necessarily those of IOL and Independent Media.