Diary of a coronavirus-positive Kiwi in NYC: Day 1

By Simone Nathan

Diary of a coronavirus-positive Kiwi in NYC: Day 1
Simone Nathan, a Kiwi living in New York, documents life in quarantine as she battles symptoms of COVID-19.

It’s been five years since I arrived in New York and I’ve finally moved into my own place! My cat Toots and I have a lovely little spot in the East Village. As COVID-19 ravages New York, I set up a cozy quarantine nest to shelter in while the virus passed through the city. Little did I know corona had already snuck under my doorway and was preparing its own nest in my nostrils.

Day 1:

I went ahead and got coronavirus, because of course I would. I have always been that person, in discussions of “who would survive the apocalypse” who everybody agreed would die of causes unrelated to the Armageddon, like falling down a pothole or getting an infection from an ingrown hair. In a way, it’s actually gratifying to have the thing that is the thing!…Not that gratifying though. 

I woke up this morning all headachey, sipped my coffee and thought, ‘Jeez this is flavourless’. It tasted oddly, dangerously like water. I jumped on a work call where my boss remarked, “As long as none of us lose our sense of taste or smell, we’re fine.” I quietly raised a sour gummy worm to my mouth as my heart sank. Gummy though it may be, it tasted like an ordinary worm. 

The prospect of living alone in New York has always excited me, but somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered that episode of Sex and the City where Miranda chokes while eating takeout and has to give herself the Heimlich manoeuvre. Now I was faced with the prospect of figuratively Heimlich-ing myself through whatever was to come. Where was my six-season HBO contract?

Visions of my cat licking my corpse sprang to mind, but were quickly buried in the place where I stored all my bad thoughts. Surely I hadn’t really lost my sense of taste? After the call, I immediately sniffed every object in the house that had a scent. Strawberry lip balm. Bathroom spray. Cat food. Nothing. I licked a lemon. A cube of stock. Not a goddamn thing. 

How was I going to tell my mum? I had a few blessed hours until New Zealand woke up. Did I really need to tell her? It would only make my helpless parents go berserk. They’d begged me to come home for weeks, as borders closed and death tolls rose. They told me Jacinda was sending special flights just to pick up Kiwis! I’d imagined our PM landing the helicopter on top of the UN building herself and guffawed. But maybe they’d been right. I decided it was best not to tell my parents at all.

Night fell and I rang my parents, instantly telling them the news. My mum took things incredibly well! She smiled encouragingly and said I probably had a mild case that would pass over me in no time. I looked closer at my screen – there were tears pouring down her cheeks. Crap.

Read Day 2 of Simone’s coronavirus diary here.

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