The beginning is to shake the wrists, but the story has a happy ending, because since last Saturday, April 4, the doctor is one of the thirty six Valle d’Aosta to date declared cured by the new Coronavirus. “You know that you put your colleagues in difficulty, because a resource is lacking in such a complex moment, but you make the civic sense prevail and isolate yourself.” It is not at all easy when you have three children, one of whom is small, used to contact with mom, but “I closed myself in a room in the house and used a bathroom different from that of the other family members”. The husband “left meals at the door” and “sneaked out with a mask, just to get food”.
After a couple of days, the fever is gone. It was, in the case of Chiara, the most evident symptom, together with cough and a bit of cold, but what frightened her most was the “headache, really important”. “I listened and did self-monitoring with the oximeter” and the situation gradually improved, up to the negativity of the first buffer, within seventeen days, which was followed by the second twenty-four hours later. For what is known today of Covid-19, statistically, the doctor’s condition was, on paper, favorable (a young woman, non-smoker, without pathologies), but “risking to contaminate family members was the real concern and cause for anxiety “.
Therapies? “When I got sick there was still no protocol in use now. I did an antibiotic cover, to be sure. At one point, I received hydrochloroquine (a drug used in the fight against the new Coronavirus, ed.), But I chose not to take it, deciding to keep it to give it to my husband, if he had symptoms“. Fortunately, it did not happen and the secret of salvation was, in all probability, “in absolute isolation: I only left the room after confirming the second negativity”. Having obtained the withdrawal of isolation from the public health officer on Sunday (“I must say that, with me, the system worked”), Dr. Orlando resumed work already yesterday, Monday 7 April.
There is no shortage of questions, but the sense of duty and the desire to fight the invisible enemy that is scourging the world dominates them. The first is about how it got infected. “Given the absence of external contacts at work, since well before the ‘lockdown’ began, I think of two hypotheses, – he explains – or an asymptomatic patient, perhaps passed for other traumas in the emergency room, where we are protected, but not ‘ harness’ as in the tent, or an error of undressing from the devices that we wear in the Coronavirus pre-triage“. Other unknowns concern the immunity that patients declared healed would accumulate. “You cannot delude yourself that you have reached it, also because we do not know much about Covid-19 antibodies and there are no serological tests to date”.
If in doubt, that only scientific observation will allow us to settle (“I hardly see normalcy, as long as there is no vaccine”), “I I chose to protect myself more than before I got sick, even at home, still sleeping separate from the others “. And, “although I am not a person who wore much more than a watch, wedding ring and earrings, now when I go to work I do not wear anything”. The desert is crossed and Chiara – recommending everyone to “stay home and observe the precautions”, in this phase of the emergency – returned where, years ago, graduating in medicine (and then specializing in emergency) she chose to be : alongside those who are ill.
