By Vir B. Lumicao
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| Mae suffered painful blood-taking sessions during her fight against the deadly virus |
A 32-year-old Filipina domestic helper who was stricken with
novel coronavirus says she survived her 19-day ordeal by thinking positive.
Mae said in an online interview today, Aug 20, five days
after her discharge from Tseung
Kwan O
Hospital, that she was
confirmed as a Covid-19 patient on July 28. She was tested after developing a
fever three days after her employers’ 10-year-old son was found infected.
On July 29, she was added to the Centre for Health
Protection’s list of positive cases.
The next day, her male employer and his younger son, 6, also
tested positive, leaving only her female employer infection-free.
Mae said that to this day, she and the employers are still
clueless as to how they caught the virus. At the time, the couple and their
kids had been staying put in their Lohas
Park home for weeks.
He employers were both working, but at the time the woman
had closed her music studio and stayed at home, while the man was holding his
class online. She, too, had not taken her two weekly rest days in a row.
“Mahirap pong i-trace yung real source ng covid namin. Ang sabi
po kasi nila (doctors) baka daw meron na kaming covid pero hindi lang lumabas
agad ang symptoms,” Mae said. “Pero hindi po ako nag-off nang two weeks. Bale
bahay at market lang po ako.”
Now still trying to regain her health, Mae said she helps
with the chores such as wiping the table, while her employers do the all the
other jobs including cleaning and cooking.
The maid, who taught English in a diocesan high school in La
Union before coming to work in Hong Kong nine
years ago, said her employers paid her salary in full during her confinement.
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| Inside the isolation ward at Tseung Kwan O hospital where Mae was moved when her condition improved |
When she was released from hospital on Aug 15, Mae began
writing about her ordeal on Facebook under an assumed name.
Mae’s coming down with Covid-19 came as the second of three
blows to her family in recent months, she said.
She said her parents and other family members were still nursing
her brother who figured in a motorcycle accident that left him still unable to
walk and had metal plate braces implanted in his left shoulder and left leg
when she contracted the virus.
“Imagine how my parents felt. My dad cried, thinking they
wouldn’t be able to see me if something bad happened to me. I’m far away from
them and I haven’t seen them for years now. I know how hard it is for them. My
brother is still recovering and me at the hospital,” she wrote in one of her
posts.
The third blow came on the very day she left the hospital on
Aug 15, when her maternal grandmother died that morning.
“I just got discharged from the hospital, which is good, my
parents are relieved, then this happened. I couldn’t bear to hear my mom
crying. It was tough, it was probably one of the most difficult times of our
lives,” Mae wrote.
“During those times iyak din po ako...pero saglit lang. Very
positive po kasi talaga ako. I always look at the brighter side of things...para
easier,” she said.
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| Mae filled her mind with happy thoughts during the 19 days that she was confined at TKO Hospital |
Still single, Mae said that during her 19 days in hospital
it was her positive thinking that kept her going despite the pain she suffered
and later on, the boredom of confinement. She documented her whole experience
in her FB posts.
On her first day, she said she was put in an isolation room
with three chairs and a desk. There she learned how to attach her oxygen
supply, take her own temperature, blood pressure, and record everything. Then
she had to suffer painful blood sample-taking sessions. And she had to pee in a powder-filled bin.
On July 30, she videoed herself singing a religious song
“Power of Your Love”, a rendition that revealed her beautiful voice.
There were nights of painful breathing. “I suddenly have a
hard time breathing. My nose is clogged, my chest is painful when I cough that
I have to call the nurse for assistance,” she wrote, praising the nurses for
being really nice.
But she said the night of Day 3 was “the longest and (most) painful
night” during her ordeal. “My fever was so high, my head was heavy, my chest
and back were like pressing on each other and it’s like I was hallucinating. I
had different dreams every time but I didn’t remember any when I woke up. I was
groaning, tossing and turning in bed. It was hard. Very hard. But I got through
it. Yeay!” she exclaimed.
She said she was put through a series of x-rays and other
procedures, such as the “long bed with this circle instrument” on which she was
laid, pushed in and drawn out. On the last round, she felt “something entered
me like a wind that ran throughout my body. It’s cold and warm as it traveled.”
In the isolation room, she was with two older female
patients who were eventually moved out. Then she, too, was moved to a ward with
three to five patients in it.
Finally, after doses of medicine, including one that caused
her a bad side-effect and had to be replaced, she was declared virus-free and
discharged.
