A Mother's Fear.

In the past few weeks, in mostly every parts of the world, people are talking about Influenza A, H1N1. As a mother, it used to scare me very, very much for fear that it would attack any or all my children. It is always a mother’s nature to protect their children and to constantly worry about them. Why? Well, mainly because the children have been in my womb for 9 months. The bonds are simply unbreakable. The bonds are not easy to describe. If you are a mother, you would know by heart. As for me, I would rather have the virus attacking me rather than them. Simply because I don’t want them to suffer. I would rather suffer the pain on behalf of them. Come to think of it, I would rather suffer the pain even for my husband or my parents for they are also the most important people in my life. In fact my children, my husband and my parents are my life. Without them, I have nothing.

I was planning to go to Turkey for a conference in the third week of Ramadhan. It was funny to think that in the beginning I was actually very worried if I were to contract the virus there and spread it to my family. Fate obviously had taken a different turn. My eldest daughter was found positive of the virus last Monday. Chances are she got it from school. There have been issues where parents keep sending their sick children to school so that they can continue to go to work. Upon receiving the news, I felt like my heart just dropped. I couldn’t think straight for a while and I remembered my hands were shaking. Since I am just only a philosophical doctor and not a medical doctor (which at that moment I wished I should have been), my information about the virus comes only from what I read or hear in the papers and the news. And other extra information that I have just came from my assumptions and my paranoia over the unknown and the unthinkable. Having my husband in Brunei did not help the situation at all. But I know I had to be brave. This was not the time for me to panic. I kept reminding myself that qada’ and qadar di tangan Allah. I wanted to cry on my way home, but I couldn’t. So I prayed for her safety and I prayed for her to be well again instead. I was desperate to reach her, but my Waja did not seem to be able to move fast enough. When I finally arrived home, I barely had the time to think. I had to start the quarantine process, and had to take all the safety measures to make sure that the virus would not spread to others especially my other three children. I had to be calm for Yasmin and it was very difficult to do that. I didn’t want her to see how worried I was. The first few days when she still had her fever and cough and cold altogether, I had to monitor her closely especially for difficulties in breathing or continuous high fever. Luckily none of those happened.

Yasmin is now in the process of recovering. Today is her 6th day of quarantine and tomorrow will be her last. She seems to be in a stable condition. I have been working on and off since day one and have taken emergency leaves until the weekend. My husband also manages to do the same. He had come home earlier for Yasmin, and also for me. To my friends who are both medical doctors, thank you for your guidance. The knowledge that you shared with me helps me to be calm and prepared. To my colleagues who have been supporting me continuously, who have been concerned for Yasmin until now, and who have made this difficult journey somewhat easier for me, thank you so much. I owe you one. One thing that I can tell you though, having to go though this, to have experienced dealing with it face-to-face, somehow manage to reduce the level of fear that I had over this virus. The unknown now become a little bit known. I also realize that we can only pray and take precautions, but the rest is all up to Allah. I love you Yasmin.