In our current situation, the year 2020, the year of Covid-19, when you heard the word positive being uttered, what is the first thing that comes into your mind?

As I work in the hospital, the first thing that comes into my mind is covid-19. Not long before this, if I heard the word positive, I will think about pregnancy. Current issues sure had affected my way of living and a little bit of my way of thinking.

Washing hand with soap and water is the things that we often do. It is a must-do to keep our hand clean. After the toilet, before eat and after eating and touching the dirty. Now, it felt like doing everything as a double.

Touching doorknob, transferring from this table to the other table, sanitizing hand more frequently. If we go back just a little back to the past, this is all the things that we should apply in our daily living especially flushing the toilet.

To those who are detected as a positive covid-19 patient, what do you think about them?

If I said that I am not cautious of them, I am lying to you. I do feel scared and be more cautious around them but not until the level of neglecting them.

Nobody asks to be infected, everyone is doing their best to keep themselves safe except for those who chose to be ignorant.

I believe that everyone is scared of the consequences of this virus. I am too and sometimes being afraid affect my judgements which result in my words and action might hurt another feeling. Things in life do not always happen as I expect it to be.

What if?

There might be a day that I would be infected by this virus too if I do not boost up my awareness. I hope that day would not come. I can imagine myself feeling guilty and blaming myself for everything. I would be deeply saddened because I know that I will be separated from my love ones, especially my little girl.

I cannot imagine how much all of the front liners are bearing their longing to hug their children, meeting their parents, friends and others outside of the facilities.

Looking at them...

Every day at work, I will be eagerly waiting for the last bell of working hours to arrive. I can go home and took off the mask I am wearing and breath freely. I miss the fresh air that once breath in without fear of the surrounding and it risk.

While I can breathe freely at home, the front liners are struggling to breathe in their suit. Their movements are also restricted especially the neck and shoulder region because of the suit thickness. They cannot even scratch their face if it is itchy or wipes their nose when they sneeze. They have to bear more than that for hours, four to five hours.

Some of the patients look healthy but they have to stay inside until they are allowed to be discharged home. Some of these healthy patients can suddenly have difficulties to breathe and be very sick until death. If they are dead, not all of the family members are allowed to come and see or touch them for the last time to prevent the virus from spreading around and. The burial will be done by a special team.

As for my conclusion.

Seeing someone that we care for on a screen is not enough.

If we see them trip we cannot catch them, If we see them cry we cannot hug them, if we see they are having difficulty to get up from bed... We cannot help them. When they ask for water we cannot give to them. All is done by the front liners for us and they are doing more than that to help but... They have more than one patient to attend. We cannot expect them to be alert exactly 24 hours even if they want to.

I know it is not easy to make a big change from our previous way of living to our new normal.

I believe if we work it out together, we might be able to conquer this situation until everyone can get the vaccines which I am not sure if it already exists or still or still understudies.

Live in the new normal, improvised the old life.

Take care of just one person which is ourself, therefore we will automatically keep our love ones safe.

Live like a smartphone alarm clock which can be a snooze.

Even after we turn it off, it will still ring until we shut it down properly. Be a reminder to others and let them decide because just like an alarm clock if we turn it off but we did not wake up, we will be late for work.