In the recent past, we were grieving the sudden passing of my father who collapsed unconscious as soon as he got off a motorcycle on which he was a pillion rider. We rushed him to the hospital where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. He had had no significant medical problems to speak of. They couldn't determine the cause of death as the facility was understaffed and overrun with patients battling the Covid-19 pandemic or other infectious diseases. We had to get out of there in no time.

A week after my father's untimely demise, my mother suffered a massive stroke and went into a coma. We brought her home after the doctors treating her at the hospital had declared her brain dead. During the hospitalization, she was diagnosed with Covid-19, which we were told caused her the ischemic stroke.

Of note, we live in a village where we have no access to healthcare at all.

As her caregivers at home, my wife (42) and I (48) were exposed to my mother while she was still comatose and recovering from the infectious disease, and subsequently both my wife and I tested positive for the coronavirus. With no one else around to help us except my daughter who we had kept in isolation, we continued caring for my mother, giving her nothing but thin liquids via a feeding tube.

The symptoms my wife and I experienced through our recovery lasting a week to 10 days included a low-grade fever, loss of taste and smell. It took us about a month to regain the latter. Even my mother, who is 68 and otherwise healthy, regained consciousness and her ability to communicate over a month or so and she began taking in food orally after I had no choice but to go ahead and remove her feeding tube myself. She is still paralyzed and bedridden, though.