By Ange Iliza

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Despite millions of lives lost to the Covid-19 pandemic in the past one year, beliefs that “it is just flu” or that “it is for old people” still persist.

I am not sharing my experience because it was a unique case, but because I want to bring awareness to the fact that it can happen to anyone, even a 22-year-old healthy woman.

One workday morning; I woke up to sounds of phone notifications just like many other remote workers in 2021. As I turned my head to reach my phone, I suddenly froze, something that has never happened to me. I thought my eight-hour sleep routine was cut short, but it wasn’t. I couldn't move my whole body, I couldn’t feel my back and just trying to open eyes was too painful.

It was a few days after the Rwanda government imposed a citywide lockdown across Kigali in January, shutting down all non-essential activities including schools. My brother had just got home from a boarding school where a dozen students, as we found out later, had tested Covid-19 positive.

And no, Covid-19 was not the first thing that came to my mind when I tried to think about why I woke up feeling sick.

A few days later when I did get tested, my symptoms did not match. I did not have fever, dry cough, flu or any respiratory-related issues. I had a terrible lower-back pain, joint pains from my feet upwards, a severe thirst and my eye muscles hurt. I later met other people who had the same exact symptoms and tested Covid-19 positive.

As confused and sick as I was, I was still working and searching my symptoms on Google, but to no avail. Getting to a hospital seemed like too much effort since I have never been to one and there was a lockdown with no public transport. It was also a day after my diabetic mother fell seriously sick.

Unlike me, she had to rush to the hospital. It is a protocol for many hospitals to run Covid-19 tests when treating patients with unrelated symptoms or sickness. They, too, probably know by now that Covid-19 can have adversely weird symptoms.

That evening, a doctor's van pulled up to our house. My mother was in it with another old priest and nurses in PPEs. She had tested Covid-19 positive and so did I when the doctors tested me.

I was taken to a hospital, but because I did not have any comorbidities (the presence of one or more additional conditions often co-occurring with a primary condition), I was sent home with Favipiravir pills, the new Covid-19 drug that has allegedly increased the number of daily recoveries to hundreds in Rwanda.

They might be efficient but they are the worst pills I have ever taken. My body would shut down after taking them. They made me weak, nauseous and extremely thirsty. They require an abnormally huge amount of food before intake, something I am not a fan of.

I would take eight pills a day, four in the morning and four in the afternoon. That meant hours of feeling weak, thirsty and having a headache. But my pain was a tiny fraction compared with my mother who took 18 pills in the first two days.

At the hospital, I was surprised to see how many young people were being treated for Covid-19. I met a 25-year-old woman who was put on a ventilator. She had been in the treatment centre for three weeks and had a terrible cough.

I am living proof that Covid-19 does not care about age. Anyone can get sick.