Kevin Da Costa – Interviewed by Anand Chhabra

Kevin Da Costa remembers his time in isolation with COVID-19.

The experience of contracting COVID-19 

I think the first notice I got of this pandemic might be coming was because of where I was with my job at the time. I was in Italy working with a Canadian company and my job meant going out to Europe. I had to go out and see a client there and this was just as news was filtering through about COVID-19 in around February time. 

The pandemic as we know was already in China and there was a fear that the disease would spread around the world and there were slight warnings. So in early February it wasn’t number one in the news but it was on the news and some governments were discussing and taking action, but still the UK government hadn't taken any action. In that context I was checking whether it was ok to go to Italy. I had to go to the Lombardi region, near Milan.  I'd check the government website for updates and news, and I was a very aware of COVID-19. 

While I was out there in the area I was staying in, the status changed to high alert to high risk in that Lombardi region. There's very little information you get from the government website. It was the first country in Europe, where it really exploded, and I was in the exact area. Looking back on it was very surreal what happened. On the return journey back to the UK I got to the airport and everybody at the airport all the staff were preparing. It was still before the UK government had made any proclamations about which countries were allowed to go to and which countries the disease affected. 

They were stopping people with the temperature guns and I assumed that after a check they wouldn't let me on the plane, and they said when you get back to the UK please visit the NHS website for what you should do next.

There wasn't a specific number to call at the end of February and until I got back, then I called the NHS 111 number, it was very simple and they told me I haven’t got any symptoms, I don't have a temperature. They said to me that when you come back from the region which is already high risk in Europe consider self-isolating. I've been communicating that to my wife and son and so when I got back I was living in a cabin at the end of the garden. I'd have to arrange to come and use the toilet and the bathroom that kind of thing, so camped in the cabin self-isolating. I can see but I couldn't go anywhere near my wife or son. 

I came out that week thinking I've dodged whatever is going around, because I didn't have any symptoms or was ill. Two weeks later into early March the government started to take the COVID situation more seriously by that time they were talking about closing the schools or not to close the schools, and it was pretty much left to individual schools at that time. In early March we decided to remove our son from school because the government was not taking action. The same week his school closed anyway. Within a couple of days of my son being home he started feeling ill. 

It was unusual for our son to get ill, he is a very active 9 year old and he didn't stop running around or anything like that and he didn't have the all-pervasive symptoms people can get with the disease as we know. But he had headaches, got tired quickly, had a raised temperature and he also had a persistent cough. There was very little information about it and it wasn't a daily thing in the in the newspapers in the media. We managed his illness at home through lots of Ayurvedic and homeopathic treatments.

After about two weeks our son started to feel better, but, within about two days of his recovery I started to develop a really severe headache, a very severe migraine to the point that I could barely open your eyes. The light was hurting me every time I opened them. Then I started to cough, I can’t remember losing my taste or smell. However straight away I immediately went off food, and if you see me face-to-face you I don't miss too many meals!

Maybe my tastebuds or my sense of smell went, but I didn't really realise it at that time I wasn't conscious of it, but I wasn't eating. The following day I woke up with a very high temperature something like 38-39 degrees and it was so intense. It seemed to descend on me the loss of wanting to eat and the day after that I couldn't breathe properly. Therefore within a couple of days I went from a mild headache to struggling to breathe. We started phoning the NHS 111 number and my wife immediately started keeping a diary of everything – the calls that were made – the treatments we were advised to take – the food I tried to eat but couldn’t – how often I drank – how regularly I took medication…it became a round the clock scenario for my wife…day and night. 

I don't tend to sort of get man flu, although my wife will tell you different! It took a few days to really start communicating to feel like we were being taken seriously, and was eventually diagnosed me on the phone. It was so intense, the disease upon me, that my wife had to speak on my behalf, every now and then they would ask if I had the permission to let my wife speak on my behalf. They asked me a bunch of questions; my wife relayed the diary, she started including my high temperature and the symptoms that I was showing.

It was really quite scary in the sense that I couldn't even get up the stairs couldn't get into the bathroom; I would walk six or seven steps and then I would have to lay on the steps it was pathetic site, it really was. I was very conscious of my son seeing me like this; we are like two peas in pod, regards to our relationship. So it’s ninety percent the case that I didn't want to worry him, as kids they always think their dad is strong and tough and all of that.  So there was that and there was another thing not to get him to worry or scare him. 

The other 10 percent was pride in the sense that I don't want anybody see me like this, in this condition. For a big man (6ft 2inch) you know trying to get up the stairs seemed a lot and I was feeling really kind of pathetic thinking, what's going on here? So just even simple movements would make me gasp for breath. I was coughing that much within a few days I lost my voice. Looking back at it now it's kind of funny.

My wife was absolutely amazing and helping our son understand, without him having to get worried. I wasn't certain that I had it because testing was not available as easily as it is now…my wife kept asking (almost daily) for a test but I was never offered or given one. I got diagnosed over the phone. It was clear that I was having symptoms, so they had a consultant to call me back. This was end of March. The logical part of this, you know that doctor’s will not know everything about the disease and how to help you, but the emotional part of you thinks of course they know. We are brought up to trust the doctor and you try to listen and that they're going to have the answers and it was very important that they didn't. They were learning things that will happen in real-time just like you were, no one really knew back then. 

We knew about the loss of taste and smell symptoms later in April/May time but I couldn't remember loss of taste or smell and I really couldn't eat properly at all, my wife trying to give me a banana to eat and it  took me about half an hour to eat half a banana and all I could do is drink water and so it was very very horrible. I' nearly ended up in the hospital. In the past I had injuries playing football or cut myself or silly things I've never really been ill or had a disease or had a severe virus or an ailment. I haven't got diabetes or cancer I've been lucky especially given my heritage, diabetes is all over my family so far, I haven't had anything like that or heart disease or anything.  So even though having suffered those things this is the number one thing that I've ever experienced that's really had an impact upon my physical health and for two weeks things for were really bad I couldn't function at all.

I couldn't think, I couldn't read, I couldn't open my eyes, I couldn't watch TV, I couldn't play a video game or especially listen to music which is my go-to place where I go for half an hour for his break.  I just couldn't listen to it more than just not been able to focus everything hurt. It hurt try to keep my eyes focused on one thing. It hurt trying to tune my ears to hear something it would intensify my headache. Two weeks I spent most of my time with my eyes closed during the day it was really weird. I would look like a pathetic site. The crazy thing trying to get a test or a swab test we couldn't get one at that point. This was largely due to the fact that there were so many cases all of a sudden it went from no cases at the end of February to the end of March lots and lots of cases and the government was sort of panicking into an action and the NHS hospitals ICU’s (Intensive Care Units) were being kind of overwhelmed. 

What was good was that the consultant was calling me every day and we got a temperature check done over the phone. At that time, hospitals were only taking in people who were classed as an extreme emergency or having a heart attack, so I didn't go straight to the ICU and they were trying to filter out the critical and non-critical patients and even though I was in a real state, I was classed as non-critical. I avoided being taken into the hospital by one day and so every day they had to take my temperature over the phone and began recording my temperature. The consultant said if my temperature didn’t come back down in 24hrs, then they would have to take me in as an extreme temperature should last only for eight or nine days and if it persists any longer then that's a bad sign. It was getting close to the nine-ten days.

My wife having this news from the consultant sat me down and explained that if I didn’t try and eat, try to start rebuilding my strength then all the care she was doing for me would be taken out of her hands too. She would make me Ayurvedic drinks, I would only be able to manage honey in these drinks as some form of energy, but by this time I had not eaten in two weeks and this was now reaching a critical stage.

I wasn’t really looking to go into hospital and for that to happen because it looked like on the news that everybody who went in only half came out. At that moment in time we did know people from the Black and Asian community were being disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and died as a result and in March, that data wasn't in yet.

I wasn't thinking, ‘maybe I'm half Asian, maybe I'll get this’, but I was more thinking, ‘you know they're going to have to drag me to hospital if I'm going there!’ I was kind of self-reflective more than what's happening with the Black and Asian community and the effects upon them I was more conscious of my weight and my age as a negative factor on the disease. The news coming out was the older and more weight you a carrying is more potential risk and so all about that and that made sense to me. I'm heavier than I used to be and that isn't helping. The difference being that our 9-year old son got it and he been healthy, and his body brushed off the disease without too much drama. I think I lost a stone during the 2 weeks I had the disease which is the probably the only positive things to come out of my getting it. 

Really I don't know how we got through those two weeks because I couldn't let my wife in the office or my son got to get near me and that was very difficult, the most difficult time I had emotionally, because when you're suffering with this kind of thing and you need you need a hug and it wasn’t possible, so that was a very, very hard thing for me.  

So no matter what I've been through my life when I got injured playing football, I never thought once in my life that I would be close to death, like I had been under the COVID-19 disease. I've had jobs that have put me into tight spots, but I never felt have been in danger. I've never been in a situation before this, with this I felt my mortality. This time I really felt my mortality.

Covid-19 a ‘Cleanser’

The changes that it brought immediately was then I started to try to communicate to my wife about doing our will. It wasn’t the case of, ‘how rubbish that we're not got this sorted about our will’ but it was the case of after this event like this we really need to look at sorting our will out, because I wasn't sure I was going to make it. 

It was already looking bad and with me struggling to be breathe and thinking if I go into hospital, I don’t know what will happen.

I started to really think, ‘What happens to my wife?’, ‘What happens to my son?’. You start going into overdrive, you really do. I mean my wife doesn't really know my password to my bank account or my Gmail account and all silly things like that that. You start to think about what life would be like for them if I wasn't there, it wasn't an arrogant thought that ‘I got to get all these things done’ as a matter of fact. It becomes a very real thing about how they are going to cope without you. It’s not that you think there can get by without you but you think, the day to day practical things that need to happen that if you're not there and that's everything, life insurance, car insurance, the fact that I have a few shares and my wife doesn't know how to access them and I later found out that they say it’s very hard to get hold of those shares and that was for our son's future effectively. 

If it gets much worse for me, my wife and my son lives would be much harder and so you start to plan for it. It was also such a cathartic experience to have dealt with creating safe access to things like bank accounts, insurances and all the kind of things that ultimately are for those who are left behind. And then I started to think I've got to write a letter or leave my son with something if I'm not here and I've got to bring him up in my absence what would I say to my 16-year old son. What will I say to my 18 year old, or 21 year old son or even what would I say to the day he got married, what do I say to him when he becomes a dad himself? 

You start to anticipate those conversations you would have with your son if you're not there. 

It's a nightmare to be thinking about those things and you don't want to upset your wife or child by telling these things and you have to tell them some things and you, so you don't want to tell you young son. That I found myself thinking about it constantly, and that thought process takes over your life in this situation. Really dark stuff, and obviously I got through it and I'm fine, but as I said in the moment you feel your mortality.

It has changed me to certain extent and if anybody reading this is in a situation and I wouldn't wish this on anybody it's definitely a cleanser when something like this happens to you. I can see things clearly, I know it's a cliche but it's a lot of truth to your understanding in that moment what is a priority in your life and as you start to recover you also started to think what's a load of rubbish in my life that I need to cut out. Once you realise you will make it you start to think of beyond your bubble and beyond my loved ones. I think about my parents start to think of my brothers and the wider group of people I love and the people I don't know I'm related to. I certainly continue think this way without trying to judge anyone, and I certainly started to evaluate all my relationships.

I wanted to let all the people I really cared about know that I do care, we don't do enough of it or explicitly. How much I love my wife, and to tell her everyday. How much I love my parents, and my brother's know how much I love them but maybe we don't ever say it or show it. 

It may be full of cliches but when you have an experience like this, you become well aware of your mortality and so think about your relationships.

I had always had conversations with my friends and they're like, ‘why are you telling me this?’ I can tell you why and I can explain to you if you want about being in the moment and other few conversations like it became my way of getting the stress of the situation off my chest.

The other thing that happened right at the moment of me being as ill as I was, I lost my job…neither me or my wife even stressed about that because it was literally fight or flight with my health at that time.

The company I worked for were great in the sense that they continued to pay me what I was owed until the end of March then along with everybody else they had to let me go as well. The world pandemic affected their business, they lost their contracts so alongside all my colleagues, and we all lost our jobs in one hit. 

My wife continued to work through the summer whilst looking after me, our son and everything else. We've had financial struggles in life before. But the situation forces you to be honest in your relationships with your nearest loved ones…my wife, our son and I were able to communicate each other of what we mean to each other. I feel really lucky that is the case. It's been extremely powerful I've been able to tell my son how I'm very proud of him in the way he helps his mum out, how he looked after me and how he stepped up and what that means what that means for him, not just now but as he grows up so we try to reflect on and talk about the experience in the context of how that might help us in the future really and my wife I say the same kind of things. 

 Outside my immediate bubble as well of my family I feel very lucky that I got some very good friends and family and the ones that you felt were good and generally close to you and loved you, every one of them stepped up and pitched in, just to make sure that you're ok, checking in on you, sending a message of love and support and saying very beautiful things even though I wouldn't considered my inner circle in a friends. 

It was a case of even reaching out to the neighbours that you don't know very well and that’s also because of the impact of this. I felt like I could reach out to them and then say let me do the shopping for you. For example all the online shopping, supermarkets were oversubscribed and they couldn't get you a slot for three weeks ridiculous things like that, neighbours would bring us food and checking in on us, collecting medical prescriptions for me and things like that and people that I wouldn't I wouldn't have expected from them or asked and that was a very uplifting experience. I know my wife really appreciated every single person who contacted her too during this time to check in, ask if we needed anything, or if there was anything they could do.

And in the context of your questions, think about the beautiful family on the corner, they are a Muslim family and I've seen this family look after everybody during this crisis and we've been really friendly with them all this time. They try to cook for us and everybody else in the street and we certainly had no expectations of that and they were amazing, but this is a normal part of their culture. An older Pakistani gent lives alone across the road and they are not related by blood but they see him as an Uncle. His wife passed away couple of years ago, he’s a very sound lovely guy, but they don't leave him alone, in a good way, they always make sure he's fed and it's stuff like that we got to see and we've got to look out for others and when you recover from such a disease you really see this stuff going on and it was a really beautiful thing. 

 Since I have not been able to work but been recovering, I have been reading a lot around race and politics. I really regret not being able to get the education in earlier years. I've never really been a social media person, I haven't got a Facebook account, I’ve had a Twitter account but go on it every 6 months. I had it for about 5-years which is a long time, I’ve not been on it at all recently but I started reading on Twitter more in that period in the summer I've only been more active on reading than commenting on stuff in the last 6-months.

My wife is fully Indian so there’s no mistaking her colour and I understand why she comments on topics of culture, identity and race, I could almost pass for white myself as I’m half Irish. I've been made to feel my colour plenty of times in my life. I've had many racist experiences. 

You can help connect with people that you have empathy for, the things that you care about. I talk about music and records all the time and I still post about music and records but my social media is basically dominated by me liking and retweeting and commenting not on music but mainly politics in the broad sense, and stuff to do with empathy, to do without race issues, around the Black experience.

Obviously, this year that's one of the things that gone hand in hand in parallel with the news on COVID-19 is the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement and this been very powerful. We as parents have been able to talk to our son and start getting angry together thinking and discussing this subject through. We certainly been lacking in terms of those suffered a lot of violence in the US compared to the UK and elsewhere and we certainly know it's not big a step not to empathize with their situation and their experience and yet we've all had experiences like this, where we feel extremely vulnerable or not even good enough.

The anxiety we feel when confronted by people who have not understanding with our lived experience, its always consciously there in me in terms of lived experience. Experiencing racial issues and tension on the news and then having the family discussion on it has in a good way helped me focus so my thoughts on some of these things and another area of the subject matter that I was dwelling on 18 months before COVID-19 started. 

My dad is Indian, he left India when he was 18. What I realise the hanging out with my dad at his work’s holiday he was with his white work colleagues, he was two different kinds of people. I have been thinking about this a lot it breaks my heart to think about this because he kind of had to subjugate himself to the majority white crowd. In the late 70s and 80s it was programmes like ‘Love thy Neighbour’, ‘Mind your Language’ etc. My dad’s white colleagues would be doing impressions and ripping jokes about him constantly. They would be doing their funny Indian accent to him and making stupid jokes about spicy food etc. It was constant and all the time, these jokes were aimed at him on purpose. My dad would laugh along and I was a witness to this over the years. I wanted to say to him why do you put up with the stuff dad, but I used to say that in my head. My dad is a very gentle person and remember him looking at me and say they were just joking, but in the way, he would like a father just tried to pacify and move on quickly. I knew that that wasn't true, and I could see how much pain it caused him I could see the pain in his eyes. I know it and I realise there was more pain when I realised, I felt disappointed in him,  that he wouldn't call out it out for it was in that moment. But it's not like now, it's not like it was the 1970s 1980s. I know now why later in life what you put up with, it’s because feeding his family was more important to him than losing his job wasn't worth it for him just to call out racist idiots at work. Not having a social life, because he couldn't handle a bit of so called ‘good natured’ banter around a pool table, I would want to punch people in the face like that. 

I talked a lot about this to my wife and son about racism and classism and how that functions in this country. I don't want to scare my son but make him understand so that he wont lose his power when it happens to him, you want him to grow and understand and not scare him, and you also want them very much to be a child as well to have balance. But racism will happen to him, micro-aggressions will happen to him – its my job to help my son hold his space.