Tuesday, 24 March
It’s either Day Five or Six of our quarantine period. My husband arrived Mondovì station last Thursday at 9:30 am and we came directly home, so I count from there. Our life is mostly tranquil and relaxing as we settle into being at home together after a long separation. Except for being confined to the house, our property and immediate environs, there’s not much outside of the ordinary.
Except that we take our temperatures morning and evening so I can report them to a young woman who telephones each day from the health service. We monitor ourselves for any sign of illness. We take a deep breath and hold it for 10 seconds; supposedly an early indicator of infection is an inability to do this without discomfort. So we do it throughout the day. We drink liquids—water, herbal teas—conscientiously. We check for diminished sense of smell or taste—another of the virus’s bag of tricky symptoms.
Except that the Red Cross delivered groceries to our front gate yesterday. I telephoned at 9:00 am and read my shopping list to a volunteer. Other volunteers did our shopping in a local supermarket. Around 3:00 pm another volunteer called to say the delivery was on its way; she told me the total so I could put cash into an envelope. Minutes later two young women in head-to-toe bright red protective suits (Ebola suits, they’re called in Sierra Leone) and white face masks arrived in a Red Cross vehicle, unloaded our order outside the gate and collected the envelope I’d left in our post box. We exchanged greetings and heartfelt good wishes across a careful distance.
Except for those few things, most of which feel like support and compassionate care, everything seems normal. Which of course it is not. As soon as either of us opens email or a news feed the clamor of a world in turmoil invades our warm domestic circle. We consume only as much news as absolutely necessary. We see that numbers of new cases and of deaths are slowing in Italy since last Sunday. It’s too early to call this a definite downturn but seems worthy of cautious optimism. One source says that in Korea and Thailand, where the crisis seemed to have passed and normal activity had resumed, more cases are now being detected. This thing is a devil.