Late in January 2021, my mum, dad and I tested positive for Covid 19. Since it was the very beginning of the second wave, unfortunately, we caught a mutant strain that was hard to detect. By the time they did detect it our lungs were affected very severely. It was to the extent that my mum was in the ICU for a couple of days. But we somehow made it out safely. Even though things were bad we kept reminding ourselves how my grandparents at home were safe and had tested negative. Unfortunately, this didn’t last too long.

A week into our recovery my grandparents tested positive and were also hospitalized. My grandma made it out unharmed but my grandad was in the hospital for 25 days. He’s 80 years old with a recent heart bypass surgery and suffers from diabetes. His lungs were badly affected and his oxygen levels wouldn’t stabilize but we still did not lose hope. We kept believing he was going to be okay. After almost a month on the ventilator and external oxygen supply, he was completely stable and was going to come back home.

He did come back, but a day into being back we realized that he had lost his memory. They call it Post Covid Dementia. Most of the doctors said that even though it’s aggravated by Covid, at his age the chances of him being normal again were bleak. It was a hard pill to swallow. They also said that if it’s purely Covid related he’ll snap out of it in 2 to 3 months. We chose to believe that.

Things seemed to get worse each day. He would forget to shower, or he would refuse to accept how old I was. He just wasn’t in the present. Even when I sometimes was accepting that this was not going to change, my family around me refused to accept that.

Today, exactly 2 months later, he woke up and he had snapped out of it! He remembered everything! It’s been nothing short of a miracle. I knew that positive thinking and gratitude makes my approach towards life better, but this straight up felt like magic!