Our English friend with COVID had been moved to intensive care, but his family felt encouraged yesterday when he was able to make phone calls to both his wife and son. He’s been there for two days, and we hope the specialists have helped him turn the corner. 

As well as COVID-related pneumonia, our friend has a second lung infection, which at least the doctors can treat with antibiotics. He’s on a modified CPAP machine, one level below a ventilator but one step above oxygen. He hates the mask, which covers most of his face, knowing that it’s necessary but feeling claustrophobic and disoriented when he wakes up, presuming he’s been able to sleep. 

Our friend was also briefly paralyzed on one side from a mini-stroke, a transient ischemic attack, which fortunately lived up to its name and has proved transient. The doctors haven’t founds signs of lingering brain damage, or any particular reason why it happened. They think he had the attack because his body is so stressed.  

During his phone calls yesterday, our friend was able to talk about how different his life will be during a long recovery period, and over an indeterminate time afterward. He won’t be able to go deep-water diving anymore. He doesn’t know when he’ll be able to go back to work. 

This is what it’s like, folks, to be a fit and healthy person who falls seriously ill with COVID. Most people won’t have such a bad case, but some will, and it can happen unpredictably. I’m writing this to encourage everyone to follow guidelines and stay home. Maybe to scare people into doing so. 

In Ontario, we’ve been told this week we have to stay home for three months, the only exceptions being workers in essential services. We can make one shopping trip a week, go to the drug store, walk dogs, maybe go for a walk ourselves while observing social distancing.

How the authorities are going to enforce this remains unclear, although Russia is already cyber-monitoring its citizens (and probably won’t stop), while a friend in Ottawa says police have been pulling over drivers crossing the bridge to Quebec asking about the purpose of their trip. 

There’s also the question of how long people are going to remain compliant.

And here’s something I learned from living in other countries, a couple in particular. My husband was a foreign correspondent for The Globe and Mail, and that took us to Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro, both in times of crisis. We moved to Mexico City two days before a pair of massive earthquakes killed at least 10,000 people and flattened broad swaths of the capital. Three years later, we arrived in Rio during a time of hyper-inflation that led to food shortages and massive social disruption. (That’s Copacabana beach in the photo.)

As foreigners we were protected from the worst of both crises, but getting through them was still an enormous challenge. While my husband did his job, I bumbled, coped, felt overwhelmed, ran my legs off to work off the worry and lived inside a burr of distress for people worse off than we were. 

I also felt proud of myself, revelling in my ability to figure things out, loving the constant novelty, the buzz of living in a foreign country, enjoying the new cultures, languages and histories, along with the great beauty of both Mexico and Brazil. Above all else, I felt fascinated and even privileged to watch things unfold. To live through historic extremity.

Then I got tired of it, growing heartily sick of the many, many ways things in both countries didn’t work, and hadn’t worked since well before the crises. 

I wanted the beaches of Rio but not the ever-present danger of being kidnapped or murdered or mugged. The culture of Mexico but not the feeling of being constantly and cheerfully ripped off, even though I could afford it, or the newspaper could. In the end, I wanted to get on a plane and leave. As of course I could, for visits home. 

I bring this up now because I have an idea people are going to get just as tired of the coronavirus crisis, and in much the same way.

Most of us are coping pretty well right now, even single mothers who are overwhelmed by having to care for their children alone, and people out of jobs, at least temporarily, and people who aren’t sure how they’re going to pay their rent. We’re stressed but things are moving along, more or less.

Yet I know we’re going to get sick of having to stay at home, imprisoned in safety. We’re going to start flouting the rules. Sneaking out of the house. Risking dangerous behaviour—dangerous to both ourselves and the community. Dangerous to old folks, to immuno-compromised folks, and to front-life health workers who face danger enough already. 

We’re going to get claustrophobic, balky, unpleasant. It’s going to happen. I’ve seen it before. Been there, done that.

And so I write about our friend. 

Can you imagine, as a fit and vibrant person, what it’s like to wake up in intensive care and find that one side of your body is paralyzed? To be afraid that you’re going to remain paralyzed, even if in the end—or at least, so far—you don’t? To have to breathe through a mask that leaves you feeling panicked, suffering from two different types of pneumonia, unable to see your family and having too little energy to even talk to them on the phone?

Maybe you don’t want that. Maybe you want, for the long haul, to stay at home. 

Although, as ever, I’m fascinated to see how it all plays out. Presuming I make it through.