The Day the Sickness Came

It seemed like a regular work day on the day that the sickness came. After work I went to the gym and saw it one of the TVs playing the news. I had my elliptical headphones tuned into something else, but I saw the ticker running across the bottom of another screen. “World Health Organization Declares Coronavirus a Global Pandemic”. There had been some murmurings about this new virus online and at work, but I wasn’t sure it was going to amount to anything. After all, we had prepared for an Ebola virus pandemic that never came. There were team meetings where we laid out what our response would be. We learned how to don and doff hooded masks that we never ended up using. But when this virus came, things seemed different. The first inkling was when masks started disappearing from the supply closet. I thought it was strange, so I stashed some in one of my office drawers for safekeeping. You could feel it in the air that something weird was going on. So, when they announced the pandemic, I knew my Spidey senses had been right. I decided to stop by the grocery store on the way home from the gym. I wanted to stock up on some freezer and canned goods, as well as some dry stuff for the pantry. Surprisingly, the store was pretty empty except for the people stocking the shelves. As I wandered aimlessly down the baking aisle, trying to think about what I would need for a pandemic, my eyes landed on a box of cake mix. It was one that was familiar from my childhood; a red box with a slice of chocolate cake pictured on the front. I reached for the box. I had no idea how long we might have to be in the house. I might want a little slice of comfort for the end times.

Over the next days and weeks I scoured articles and my online physician forums for clues on what was next. What was this thing? How had it gotten here? Were there more symptoms than we originally thought? I wondered if the patients I had seen earlier in the year that seemed to have a bad case of the flu were actually the first cases of Coronavirus. The symptoms mimicked the flu, but it was much deadlier than any flu that I had seen in my years of practice. I started wearing scrubs to work, which I hadn’t done since residency. I was terrified of bringing the virus home from work. I would strip at the door and take my shower before touching my family or sitting on the furniture. I had been wearing surgical masks at work all winter. I had been burned the winter before, picking up a particularly nasty cough that hung on for weeks. But for this, I switched to an N95 which I had to reuse over and over again.

One day, a family of four came into the clinic. They all wanted to be tested for the virus. I had the nurse do their nose swabs and waited 30 minutes for the results to come back. The entire family was positive. Dad asked what they could do. The mother insisted on antibiotics. I went into my spiel about how antibiotics are for bacteria and they don’t work on viruses. The only thing they could do is treat the symptoms with things like cough medicine and fever reducers. I recommended that they take Vitamin C to try to boost the immune system. One of the kids asked “can we eat chocolate cake?” “Absolutely”, I said, with a grin that was hidden by my mask The same family came back two days later. When I saw their names on the screen, I wondered why they were back again. I assumed the worst, but I was in for a sweet a surprise. The kids and the dad said they ate chocolate cake and had had recovered by the next day. Mom hadn’t improved, but she also didn’t eat the cake. It wasn’t part of her keto diet. I was pretty sure it was a fluke, but I still went back to the physician online groups and searched for posts about chocolate cake. Surprisingly, there were a few anecdotal cases of people seemingly cured of the virus by chocolate cake. Interesting.

I tucked this in the back of my mind and didn’t think of it again until I developed a nagging cough. At first, I blamed it on my allergies, because I get like that at times when I have a postnasal drip. But I had been taking my allergy medicine every day. I suddenly got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Was this the virus? Oh great! This is how it’s going to end? This is how I’m going to die? I went into an internal panic, because I was still at work and I couldn’t afford to get outwardly emotional. Towards the end of my shift, I had my nurse swab me and I waited anxiously for the results in one of the back rooms. I could tell by the look on my co-worker's face when he stuck his head into the room where I was. I knew I was positive before he even said anything. I grabbed my bag and murmured an inaudible “thanks” as I hurried towards the back door. I plopped down in the driver’s seat of my car and sat there for a minute, unable to move. Then suddenly my mind went to the box of cake mix shoved in the back of the pantry, behind rows of beans, canned soup, crackers and apple sauce. I couldn’t believe my good fortune!

As soon as I got home, I started rummaging around in the lower cabinets, looking for a cake tin. I couldn’t remember the last time I had made a cake. While I was mixing the ingredients, my eyes welled up with tears. I chided myself on believing in something so silly. After all, I was a medical professional. A whole scientist! I knew better than that, didn’t I? I tried watching TV to take my mind off of this fact while the cake was baking. But every channel was all Coronavirus, all the time. I switched it off and walked into the backyard to watch the rambunctious squirrels running up and down the tree trunks and along the top of the wooden fence. With tears running down my face, I looked up to an impossibly blue sky and implore God to help me. I didn’t know if I was crying from the stress that had built up since the start of the pandemic or over my own possible fate. The timer on my cell phone beeped me out of my pity party. I hurried inside to get the cake out of the oven. It seemed like it took forever to cool off. I peeled the plastic sheet off of the container of store-bought chocolate icing and stirred it with a knife. As I frosted the cake, my mind drifted back to mom’s kitchen where my brother and I used to fight over the bowl to lick. I smiled as I cut a slice of the cake. I ate it and laid down on the couch to gather up the energy to clean the kitchen.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up on the couch the next morning, with sunlight streaming through the blinds. I sat up slowly and took a deep breath. The shortness of breath and the urge to cough was gone. Could it be? Was I cured? I waited the next few days for my symptoms to come back, but they never did. Even though my symptoms were gone, I still had to quarantine at home for 10 days, per office policy. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself. I couldn’t go anywhere. I scrolled through social media for about an hour, opting for internet comedians and animal videos. Lighthearted stuff. Once I grew sick of scrolling, I opened the word processing app on my laptop and started to type....” Case report: 44-year-old doctor cured of Coronavirus by Chocolate Cake”.