Diaries of an isolating man: days 5 & 6

Day five:

Aside from a bit of fatigue, I woke up this morning feeling virtually free of Covid symptoms for the first day since Monday.  Due to my decision to refrain from drinking alcohol last night, it’s probably the first Saturday that I’ve had a clear head in a very long time.  I’m not sure that I like it.  Of course, with the tiredness from my inability to sleep for much of the night, I turned over and dozed off for another four hours.  I still don’t know what a Saturday morning actually looks like.  

In a turn of events that can only be described as being one of the worst things that could have happened to me this week, I discovered today that the battery in my watch has stopped working.  On the face of it, there doesn’t seem to be much importance in wearing a watch when I’m stuck in isolation.  I can’t go anywhere for another three days yet and my sleep pattern has been turned upside-down and back-to-front by Covid.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s 6:50 pm, as it currently is at the time of writing, or half-past ten, as my watch seems to be under the impression it is.  In isolation, I have all the time in the world, but you wouldn’t know it from my watch.

I have always worn a watch.  I think I prefer the theatre of glancing at a timepiece on your wrist to simply reaching into a pocket to fish out your smartphone.  It’s great for indicating your boredom with a situation, even if there is sometimes a risk that you are misinterpreted as giving that impression.  I enjoy how wearing a watch feels, the way that it’s sort of like underwear for the wrist when it covers the modesty of an ill-advised tattoo.

Despite being into my fifth day of isolation, I am still wearing my watch around the flat. At this point, as the second hand staggers back and forth between two numbers in a manner strikingly similar to a drunk who is unsure of which door will take him out of the pub, it is nothing short of galling to look at my struggling watch and be reminded that I can’t even travel the short distance to the electrical shop next door for a new battery. From the mantelpiece, the clock ticks tauntingly in the background, for it knows that unlike my watch, it is there only for decorative purposes – but I am now relying on it.

This is an archived image on account of the fact that I am unable to leave my flat

Day six:

If I could give one piece of advice based on the previous six days, it would be to prepare a meal plan and shop for it long in advance of receiving a positive result and the subsequent period of isolation.  I ate pretty well last week, practically as normal, but there was scant thought for what I would do once I reached the latter part of my quarantine.  I’ve been quite fortunate and incredibly touched by the fact that since I became sick I have received offers from no less than six different people to do some shopping for me, though I have to date turned them down since my cupboards are fairly well stocked – it’s just that I am discovering that the ingredients I have can’t really be brought together into a coherent and edible recipe.

I took inventory of my kitchen supplies this afternoon when it became clear that I didn’t know what I could eat for dinner tonight, not to mention because I don’t have anything better to be doing.  I was surprised to find that I have four different shapes of pasta in my cupboard; I don’t remember buying so many different varieties of pasta, let alone cooking them.  Alongside those, I found several cans of tuna, many tins of soup, baked beans, haggis, wholegrain rice, flour, porridge oats, straight to wok noodles, and the chickpeas that I panic bought in March 2020.  I still have 250g of mince, two lemons, some eggs, and all of the herbs and spices you could name if presented with a thirty-second challenge to list things you might find on a spice rack.  In the freezer, there are frozen vegetables, some other random items, as well as a few pieces of unidentified meats.  There are meals to be found in my kitchen, I’m just not quite sure what yet.

Today is the first day I have looked forward to this year.  Under the Scottish Government’s updated guidance, anyone who has tested positive for Covid-19 can cut their 10 day isolation period short to seven days if they take a negative lateral flow test on days six and seven.  This is the day that would effectively determine whether I would be allowed to leave the flat on Tuesday or be forced to isolate for at least another day.  Considering my virtually symptom-free Saturday, I have never been as excited by the prospect of sticking a cotton swab up my nostrils as I was on this occasion.

As tends to be the case before taking most tests, however, nerves and anxiety kick in.  I woke up this morning and coughed for the first time since Friday, while the brain fog and accompanying headache has returned.  It was reminiscent of standing in front of the bathroom mirror on the morning of a Standard Grade exam and discovering that you have a massive plook on your face – only, of course, I have one of those today, too.

Last night, so enthused was I by the lack of Covid symptoms I was experiencing, I was intending that I would take the lateral flow test as soon as I got out of bed, kind of like a kid on Christmas morning.  But given the plook, I put it off until after I had eaten some poached eggs.  After taking my sample, I set the timer on my smartphone for fifteen minutes and went off to clean the bathroom.  The alert sounded and I returned to the kitchen to read the result, my heart pounding away in my chest – either through nerves or yet another Covid symptom.  There was the faintest of lines visible across the ‘T’ panel of the cassette, indicating that I am still testing positive for the virus.  I couldn’t believe it; I felt certain that I’d be getting out on Tuesday.  As it turns out, time is moving very slowly, and I still have a lot of it on my hands.

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