‘Hello?’

‘Hello. This is Dr Nachi from Public Health England. Would you mind answering a few questions, please?’ Here we go, I thought, another cold call. Scam probably. I always give these people a few seconds to justify their intrusion upon my time, just in case, before politely but firmly hanging up.

‘OK,’ I said, ‘even though it’s a Sunday afternoon. But go ahead.’

‘Am I speaking to Jamie Crawford?’

‘Yes.’

He then mentioned a storytelling event I had been to the week before. Woah! This guy knew about me. Almost definitely not a scam… the penny began to drop. Dr Nachi told me that someone who’d been at the event had just been diagnosed with Coronavirus and that consequently I would have to self-isolate for two weeks. He reassured me that as my contact with the infected person had been brief, it was unlikely I had the virus. I told him I did have a pre-existing cold and he said that unless my symptoms changed there was no need for me to get tested. He was calm, informative and polite throughout. I was glad I hadn’t hung up on him!

My son was quite upset when I told him the news. The worst part was that his mother was away and I couldn’t give him a comforting hug. But he’s a resilient boy and soon rallied.

At that early period of the disease’s arrival in the UK I was advised that other members of my household did not have to self-isolate so at least my son and wife were able to carry on their lives as normal. As for me, I was a little concerned because I knew the virus could be nasty but as the days passed without any symptoms I carried on my life more or less as normal: I work a lot from home, many of the things I enjoy in life don’t require me to set foot outside my door and I wasn’t even able to do a version of my daily walk by going round and round the garden!

It’s curious to look back on that time now with hindsight. As the symptoms of my cold changed very slightly I did end up getting tested. The big thing in the news then was the terrible flooding in many parts of the country and, in an email I wrote at the time, I describe my car as ‘almost aquaplaning along the coast road’ on my way to the Sussex County Hospital.

The whole process of testing was in its infancy so everything was rather improvised. When I’d asked for directions to the right part of the hospital on the phone the nurse had told me she’d come out and flag down my car and that she was wearing a white onesie with brown spots – I forget why! She directed me to park in a tiny loading bay and told me to wait a few minutes. About half an hour later I saw a bizarre astronaut-like figure wandering up and down the pavement with a clipboard, the face dehumanised by the plastic visor and the pipe leading from her mask to a filter machine on her back: my first encounter with a medic in full PPE. She led me into a ‘pod’ very like the inside of a lift and took my temperature and a swab. It was a bit like being in an episode of Dr Who!

A slightly unreal vibe also informed the process of getting the result. Not having heard back after several days I phoned the hospital, who told me to call my GP surgery. The GP surgery told me to call the hospital! When I protested, the receptionist did eventually manage to find the path lab report and told me it simply had the word ‘undetected’ at the bottom. The odd thing was that neither she nor her clinical practitioner were confident about confirming what it seemed to mean!

I’m not a doctor but even I realised that ‘undetected’ was a scientist’s typically cautious way of interpreting data: i.e. it meant: virus not found though potentially present in tiny amounts that could just possibly manifest symptoms later on. Fortunately that didn’t happen. So I was free! Allowed to go out again and see people and tell stories…until the whole country went into Lockdown a few weeks later!

And that was my brush with Covid. Seems a long time ago now but it has served as a reminder of just how quickly events can sneak up and overtake you. I know that without the reassuring presence of the NHS just a phone call away the uncertainty and strangeness of my self-isolation would have been far scarier. Even though the newness of the virus meant they were kind of having to make it up as they went along, the health professionals I dealt with were diligent and helpful, and that made all the difference. Thank you, dear keyworkers!

I’m also well aware that, this far at least, I’ve been very lucky compared to all those poor souls whose health, well-being or livelihood has been seriously affected this year. Indeed everyone at the storytelling event was lucky. The infected person I had contact with was asymptomatic; one other person did get ill but not seriously. So this little story at least has a happy ending.

Jamie
http://www.jamiecrawfordstorytelling.com