Safwan Ahmed
Dr. Crowther
English 1101
4/24/2022
COVID-19: My Survivor Story
According to the COVID-19 archive, 60 million people had the disease. That must have been a long time ago because now the global cases have reached over 511 million. And one out of those 511 million people, was me. In the middle of December 2020, I and my family met the infamous coronavirus. Though it lasted all of one day, and with very limited symptoms, in that one day I understood the fear of this disease that had struck the world in such an unexpected way.
Nearly everyone either had COVID or knew someone who had COVID by the time summer 2020 had come around. I was the first one in my family, and by the time I had made an appointment to get tested, my dad and sisters were coughing too. A long car ride and irritating nose inspection later summed up the “test”. Two days later, it was confirmed: we all had COVID. It was as if we traveled to a different planet and lost our humanity. Our family members avoided us like we were the disease itself, refusing to come inside our house and wearing masks around us 24/7. Even after a week had passed, people were still overcautious around us, making our lives way more awkward than they needed to be. But it turned out for the better as the last thing we needed was my grandparents, both over 60 years old, to catch COVID from us. Fortunately, that did not happen. Unfortunately, other family members of ours did catch it and they did not share the same fate as I did.
April 18th, 2021 was a sad day for my father’s side of the family. His only living cousin, who I only met once 4 years before, had caught the virus and did not survive. You could say he died young, a mere age of 42, but in Islam, we do not believe in accidents so we accepted it as God’s decree. That did not alleviate the pain, however, as it was visible through the entire family that the world had lost a good person. I, for one, felt very guilty, as I saw it as “you survived but he didn’t” and now anyone who I hear has caught COVID reminds me of him. May we meet him in heaven.
March 2020 might have been long but I think that one day in December was even longer. I was confused from the minute I woke up. It was winter but the heat was on blast and I was still freezing. It got even weirder when I came upstairs and saw that my dad and sisters were in the same predicament, covered in blankets on the living room couches, freezing. I honestly thought we were dying. To make matters infinitely worse, it was a school day, so in 2 hours we had to get to work. While my dad could sleep, I and my sisters forced ourselves to do some schoolwork, thanking God that we were in online class The entire day, we pretty much fell in and out of sleep, a clear symptom of COVID-19. and this resulted in me having a lot of overdue schoolwork, as it was a weekday. This is a recurring theme in my life.
I don’t believe in luck, so I will call it fortune, God’s gift. By his grace, I survived the COVID-19 pandemic and my life has continued for another year. In a very similar conclusion I’d written previously, I said I’d end with hope for the future. My hope for the future is that I, nor anyone else in the world, ever have to go through the tragedy and loss that was a common result of COVID-19. Though that might just be wishful thinking, and as I write this, more people are coming down with the disease, and some dying from it, I still hope. I pray for each and everyone one of their families, and especially mine, that this disease harms them not. Maybe it will be done far before we expect it to? Who knows?