There are a handful of word combinations that have timelessly proven their gravity, regardless of their circumstance. “I have cancer.”, “[name of person] just died.”, to name a couple, have been the most brutal confrontations many of us have had to face in our lives, and we have never really been able to understand fate’s impeccable timing. In the last two years, a new combination was born:

“I tested positive.”

These were the gut wrenching words I heard over a phone call with my dad last March 13, 2021. The Philippines was on a rise of Covid positive cases, and on that day we hit a record high of 4,993. I couldn’t believe what I had heard, so I needed my dad to say it again.

“I took an anti-gen test and results came positive. I’m taking a PCR test tomorrow to be sure.”

Admittedly, I wasn’t the comforting son my dad probably needed me to be. I was angry, so ready to be a parent to my parent and give a speech about not being careful and all. My wife Meg spotted my body language, and realigned me with the reality of the situation and that my dad needed the best possible support he could get.

“How are you feeling now dad? Let’s wait for your PCR results first.”

We were hopeful for a false positive. Hours before the phone call, Meg and I were at risk of direct exposure to someone who tested positive in an anti-gen test. We were waiting on the PCR test results, praying and wishing it was a false positive and that we were somewhat in the clear.

The next day we found out that Meg and I were in the clear, but my dad was not.

Hospitals were at maximum capacity, and the only option we had for my dad was isolation at home. For the next ten days, dad started feeling the symptoms—shortness of breath, fever, low oxygen levels. We monitored his vitals with a thermometer and a pulse oximeter every four hours, and he was given a prescription of medicine by a family friend: Dexamethazone, Ivermectin, vitamins C and D to name a few. On some mornings he felt terrible, some afternoons he felt normal. Summer was in and he chose to stay in a non-airconditioned room away from the family, as he didn’t want to expose or be a hassle to my mom and sister. By the ninth day, I received a call from dad’s youngest brother, Eddie.

“Your dad is panicking. He can’t seem to breathe.”

After a call with my dad, we moved him into an airconditioned room. My uncle arranged for an oxygen tank to arrive at the house, and we monitored dad’s adjustment and how he was feeling from the move. My dad, just like many father figures out there, is not one who likes to admit weakness or vulnerability. To his kids and even his wife, my dad will always say he is fine. “Don’t stress your sister and mom.”, he said. “I’m fine.”

By 8pm, two hours later, I had a Lifeline ambulance pick up dad, while Meg secured ICU vacancy for Covid patients at Qualimed Hospital, Nuvali. Protocol of any ambulance is that there must be a destination set, so while I provided all the information about my dad, Meg provided the contact details and confirmation that Qualimed would be able to take him in. It took the ambulance only 20 minutes to bring dad from Alabang to Nuvali, where Meg and I were waiting outside the emergency room.

Thirty minutes in the ER and the attending physician Dr. Macatangay gave me the hard truth: my dad was in critical condition, and would have gotten into septic shock had he arrived minutes later. My dad’s oxygen saturation was an incredibly low 70, and his blood pressure was 60/40. With the quick decisions made in the ER and intervention of medication, they helped push my dads vitals up, but without assurance that it could be maintained.

By 12:50am, dad was moved to the ICU. The admissions had told me that it was protocol for a senior citizen to have company, but I could opt against it by signing a waiver. He was going to stay at the dedicated ICU for Covid-19 patients, which would put me almost at ground zero. I made the decision that I would be able to take care of my dad better from the outside, and lessen risk and worry from everyone if I stayed in. I went back to the car where Meg was waiting for me, got rid of all my clothes, disinfected, and went home.

The 5-minute ride home felt like those uncomfortably long flash backs you see in movies. Long sighs and anxious silence—preparing for the sleepless nights and stress filled days to come.

Did I mention that my father-in-law tested positive earlier that day?

On sunrise of March 23, 2021, Meg received a call from her sister in Houston, confirming that the PCR test that their dad took resulted positive. After days researching for possible hospital accommodations for my dad (before he was rushed to Qualimed), all facilities we contacted had around forty waitlisted covid-19 patients—my dad being at the end of the queue. We then looked into home service groups, where we managed to be in a shorter waitlist for Center Life Care and TMC Healthlink. With the proper distribution of labor between Meg and her siblings, by morning of the same day they enrolled their dad in a 10-day program with TMC Healthlink.

For the next days, sleep was replaced with the pursuit of understanding the virus. I called the ICU nurses every four hours, checking the vitals of my dad. Despite the average nurse to patient ratio skyrocketing from 1:2 to 1:20, Nurse Mart, Carrie, Eli, and Isabel spoke to me with all forms of hospitality. They patiently spelled certain medicines for me, which I could use to Google, and more importantly, consult with my sister-in-law Dr. Joanna, and our close friend, Dr. Ivanka Sangria. The next days was filled with me understanding what CRP, D dimer, Creatinine, Atrial Fibrilation, Inflammatory Markers, and what other terms meant. I had to learn, spell, and understand Azithromycin, Remdesivir, Tocilizumab, Clopidogrel, Trimetazine, Norepinephrine, Amiodarone, and more. I learned the difference of a nasal cannula and a non-rebreather, heart rate vs. heart rhythm, antiplatelet vs. anticoagulant. I bombarded Dr. Joanna and Dr. Ivanka with questions that I had no power to really solve; only a desperate attempt to understand what I could to be able to somewhat help my dad in any capacity. Dr. Montecillo, Rome, Parico, and Qing were taking care of my dad, but I needed to understand the terminologies they were familiar with to be able to understand where things were going, as well as be able to thoroughly update my dad’s siblings and assure everyone that dad was going to be okay.

As I journaled every update I could get for dad, Meg and her family were on full throttle to give their dad the best possible home treatment. On day one of the program, TMC Healthlink sent doctors to see my father-in-law in his home. After an initial diagnosis, they had a thorough game plan of beating the virus. While the doctors stayed ten steps ahead of the virus, Meg and her family created contingencies for any possible complication. There was a list for every possible need: oxygen tanks and refills, ambulances, private nurses, mobile x-rays, mobile labs, and more. They had strict protocol procedures to ensure the safety of the family members living under the same roof. Every corner of the house had fans or air purifiers. A CCTV was stationed inside their dad’s room, and I would find Meg taking 15-minute naps throughout the night while keeping the CCTV feed open on her phone. Every time he felt anxiety or would feel the predicted symptoms, the whole family would show up on a Facebook video call. Not a moment in time was my father-in-law left alone, not a single moment was left for him to be worried. TMC Healthlink scheduled a Zoom session every afternoon, regularly analyzing the data in comparison to how he physically looked/felt, and discussing possible solutions to complications found in the lab or x-ray results. Every possible complication was predicted by either TMC Healthlink or my sister-in-law, every possible contingency was handled by her brother Kuya Mongs and Meg, and every bit of morale boost was flooded by my other sister-in-law Jing, and their mom Myles.

As both our dads were on the road to recovery, there was no doubt a whole lot of complications. Dr. Montecillo, the attending Infectious Diseases physician of my dad, prescribed him with two drugs to counter covid: Remdesivir and Tocilizumab. My dad immediately began with the Remdesivir, but after three days, the hospital could still not get stock of Tocilizumab. With the surge of cases in the Philippines and Tocilizumab being one of the primary drugs recommended against covid, the demand was extremely high and the supply very low. While the ICU and pharmacy of Qualimed worked hard on getting their hands on supply, my dad’s siblings took the initiative to exhaust their resources in finding it themselves. The objective was to find supply for my dad, and hold the line of the supplier in case my father-in-law needed it.

Tocilizumab is distributed by two companies in the Philippines: Globo Asiatico and Zuellig. Spearheaded by my dad’s youngest brother Eddie and eldest sister Tessie, all my dad’s siblings contacted every possible connection they had to access the drug. We got all the information we needed to possibly streamline access—prescription, name of doctor, doctor’s license number, contact person of either distributor, contact person of Qualimed pharmacy. All efforts were made but the reality was that there was just simply no supply available.

I consulted my sister-in-law and Dr. Ivanka on possible alternatives to Tocilizumab. I spoke to the nurses of the ICU if Dr. Montecillo had a contingency or another drug in mind—same answer. If there was a recommended drug out there, it would be known. There was, however, a drug highly recommended by others: Ivermectin.

Covid-19 will go down history as one of the great plagues our world history has suffered from. Quoting Dr. Joanna, “Future medical textbooks will be dedicated to studying the coronavirus.” This means we are living in unprecedented times and very unpredictable futures. No one has the right solution. Ivermectin has been quite the controversial drug going around the Philippines recently, both on the political and medical point of view. I’ve found medical journals reporting against it, as well as others for it. As I am no professional in the matter, my opinion holds no power on the effectiveness of the drug—I’d like to believe it is as good as people believe it can be at fighting the virus. But this is the truth of my dad’s situation: He took prescribed Ivermectin for around seven days in his isolation at home, and he did not get better. Maybe the drug did not work on him as it should have. Maybe it gave my dad enough time to make it to the ER. It did not, however, cure him.

On March 30, my dad was scheduled for another x-ray. If the results showed no inflammatory markers, that would have meant that the other medications and my dad beat covid-19 without Tocilizumab. The downside of Tocilizumab is that a patient who has taken it cannot be vaccinated within a 90-day period. So if the x-ray results came out positive, my dad could be queued for immediate vaccination as a senior citizen.

My dad never had to take Tocilizumab.

Each day passed and the mood and body language of both our dads got better. My dad started calling me more, a less crusty voice on the other line. My father-in-law, who suffered many of the covid symptoms, slowly regained his appetite; we all started having virtual meals together. Considering the age of both our dads, their comorbidities outside covid had to be constantly checked. But the one thing that came in last in the hurdle of fighting covid was their oxygen levels—both our dads had oxygen support until the the lifecycle of the virus was done, and both dads have felt the shortness of breath and exhaustion as a side effect. They were both requested to learn how to exercise with an incentive spirometer, to work their way towards how they could breathe (or even better) before they tested positive.

On March 31, 2021, my dad and father-in-law were officially covid free.

To wish this virus on any person is a betrayal to being a human being. To ask for this virus for attention or self harm is a selfish way of thinking. It takes a village to beat the virus, and it hurts the village to lose to it. This experience was a nightmare for our families, what more for those who endured it. How do I feel about the ECQ? If it means we can flatten the curve, I’m all for it. Will it hurt finances and work opportunity/survivability? Yes it definitely will, but enduring now may just shorten the lifespan of this pandemic. Will I keep wearing a mask? I’ll wear two. How about face shields? If a bulky uncomfortable face shield will grant me even just 1% more protection, I won’t even hesitate. We all have our reservations and opinions against the government, and we have every right to feel that way. The whole world is crumbling and most countries have their incredible faults. We wish our country could be better, and we can always aim for that. But right now, I urge everyone to just stay home. Be as angry as you want to with everything capitalism or everything political, but also help ensure the safety of your loved ones by just staying home.

We have our reservations about our government but here’s a random fact: my dad’s Philhealth card covered the total hospital bill. There’s a lot of controversy regarding this system, but all I am is grateful we go through this.

Here’s my take in a nutshell: take the coronavirus seriously, accept that you need a medical professional to get through this, and no, it isn’t just a cold.

I wish this on no one. I rather get blipped by Thanos.