Wait­ing to be test­ed for COVID-19 in T&T was a process marred by bu­reau­cra­cy, con­fu­sion, and days, even weeks of wait­ing, for a re­sult that may not come.

I am 23 years old, healthy, and have no pre-ex­ist­ing symp­toms or res­pi­ra­to­ry ail­ments. I ex­pect­ed if I got the dis­ease, it should have been man­age­able.

There have been sev­er­al cas­es across the coun­try where peo­ple who fit the symp­tom pro­file or those who even had re­cent trav­el had their swabs re­ject­ed for test­ing by CARPHA. I am one of those.

THE BE­GIN­NING

I had no trav­el his­to­ry. My pos­si­ble ex­po­sure to ill­ness was Car­ni­val Tues­day, where I in­ter­act­ed for five hours with for­eign­ers and lo­cals alike, cross­ing the stage at Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

Ten days lat­er, it be­gan with a dry cough and sore throat. I knew the air qual­i­ty was good, and there was min­i­mal Sa­ha­ran dust in the air, so it’s not the nov­el coro­n­avirus. Right?

The next day, the aches and fa­tigue ar­rived. It was de­bil­i­tat­ing. All I could do was sleep or re­main in bed. Then came the fever. This was mild, with my tem­per­a­tures reach­ing 38.5°C, ac­cord­ing to my ther­mome­ter. How­ev­er, the pain and sore­ness felt as if my skin would fall off to the touch. Thank­ful­ly, self-med­icat­ing broke my fever and al­le­vi­at­ed the sore­ness.

What­ev­er this was, it was no joke. Lung pain and cough in­ten­si­fied. I strug­gled to catch my breath. Sharp pains on the pe­riph­ery of my lungs shot through my body dur­ing the wheezy coughs. I ra­tio­nalised that I could go to the doc­tor, get treat­ed for a wheezy cough and pain, and be on my way, tak­ing the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions. It can't be COVID-19.

My doc­tor treat­ed me for the wheez­ing cough and what he deemed as mild pneu­mo­nia on day five. But I was now or­dered to be in quar­an­tine for no clear rea­son. We even did a blood pan­el for some com­fort. It brought none.

I im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan googling “symp­toms of COVID-19” and “how to get test­ed for COVID-19 in T&T” af­ter leav­ing his of­fice. At 10 pm, March 11, I made the call to my Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health, ex­plain­ing my symp­toms.

I dis­tinct­ly re­mem­ber be­ing told, “Well, we can take the swab, but we have no con­firmed cas­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go so it is un­like­ly you would be test­ed by CARPHA, even though you fit the symp­tom cri­te­ria.” We end­ed the call on the mu­tu­al un­der­stand­ing that if my sit­u­a­tion de­te­ri­o­rat­ed, head to the near­est pub­lic med­ical fa­cil­i­ty, and I’d be checked on to­mor­row.

SWAB­BING, ISO­LA­TION, UN­CER­TAIN­TY

On the af­ter­noon of March 12, T&T record­ed its first case of COVID-19. The test­ing sit­u­a­tion had changed.

Bright and ear­ly on March 13, a team of doc­tors drove in­to my garage. Wear­ing my fit­ted and un­com­fort­able N95 mask, I spoke to them through a crack in the door. They ex­plained the pro­ce­dure, and one doc­tor suit­ed up, head to toe in pro­tec­tive gear, which took about ten min­utes.

The na­sopha­ryn­geal swab is un­com­fort­able at best, painful at its worse, but last­ed no longer than 30-45 sec­onds. Think of a large cot­ton swab be­ing force­ful­ly pushed in­to your nose and twirled around. The swab was re­moved and placed in­to a vial of flu­id. The doc­tor dis­robed, and the team of doc­tors left, giv­ing no time frame on when I can ex­pect re­sults. This was tak­en sev­en days af­ter my symp­toms arose, a crit­i­cal but ir­rel­e­vant de­tail at the time.

Three days lat­er, I got a call from the coun­ty med­ical of­fi­cers stat­ing that CARPHA had re­fused to test my sam­ple. They cit­ed a guide­line un­be­knownst to us at the time, that they were on­ly test­ing sam­ples that were tak­en with­in five days of symp­tom on­set. The frus­tra­tion set in for both my­self and the coun­ty med­ical of­fi­cers han­dling my case.

At this point, I was al­ready iso­lat­ed for one week, and my doc­tors sug­gest­ed I re­main in self-iso­la­tion. Af­ter be­ing re­fused by the on­ly test­ing body in T&T, and hav­ing to stay iso­lat­ed for an­oth­er week, con­cern turned in­to anger and frus­tra­tion. Health of­fi­cials from the coun­ty reg­u­lar­ly checked in which was re­as­sur­ing.

THE RE­LAPSE

I. Could. Not. Breathe. The cough­ing wouldn’t stop. I was gasp­ing for air. My eyes be­came blood­shot red. My lungs felt tight, and the pain be­came se­vere again. I head­ed to San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, fol­low­ing the ad­vice of a coun­ty health doc­tor.

I was at­tend­ed to im­me­di­ate­ly. Be­tween coughs, we de­tailed a time­line from the date of po­ten­tial ex­po­sure to right there, sit­ting un­der a white tent with “Vi­ral Area” in red spray paint, evok­ing a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic scene. Doc­tors and nurs­es garbed in head-to-toe white pro­tec­tive gear didn’t help the op­tics

At some point dur­ing the whole or­deal, I blacked out. I, a rel­a­tive­ly healthy per­son, had blacked out.

I was quick­ly tak­en in­to iso­la­tion and kept overnight in the Iso­la­tion Unit for high care and in­ten­sive care pa­tients

Poked and prod­ded, I was giv­en sev­er­al dif­fer­ent med­ica­tions dur­ing my stay. Most im­por­tant­ly, I was swabbed again, now near­ly two weeks af­ter my first symp­toms. This time, the swab­bing was hor­ri­ble and bloody, cough­ing through the whole process. With the con­stant beep­ing in the room, I fi­nal­ly got some rest and awoke the next day feel­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter. I was dis­charged, but not be­fore an­oth­er round of med­ica­tion. More in­jec­tions. Won­der­ful.

THE WAIT­ING GAME PER­SIST­ED

Un­til the test re­sults come back, I’m on a course of 7 med­ica­tions which brought a host of its own prob­lems. Drowsi­ness, lethar­gy, nau­sea, de­hy­dra­tion, di­ar­rhoea, but I was im­prov­ing.

It took three days to get a call on March 22 from doc­tors from the coun­ty health of­fice stat­ing that all their tests sub­mit­ted to CARPHA have come back neg­a­tive, in­clud­ing mine. A sigh of re­lief. I re­mained in self-iso­la­tion un­til March 27--now with just oc­ca­sion­al short­ness of breath and mild cough.

How­ev­er, an­oth­er chal­lenge arose--get­ting the of­fi­cial test re­sult from CARPHA. It has been a week since the call in­for­mal­ly let­ting me know of my neg­a­tive test re­sult. But, I’m yet to re­ceive any elec­tron­ic or phys­i­cal copy of my test re­sult, which would have al­so let me know if I test­ed pos­i­tive for any oth­er res­pi­ra­to­ry ail­ment.

Re­gard­less of the is­sues sur­round­ing CARPHA, I’d like to thank the hard-work­ing and dili­gent staff at SWRHA both in han­dling my case and treat­ment at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.