Hello,

The year 2021 was a pretty crappy year for my health… As the second year of the COVID-19, not long after I completed 30 years old, my dad got the virus from a neighbor and, unfortunately, trying to help him heal, I’ve got it too… When I realized I had it, I couldn’t stand it and, not long after it, I was having a panic attack. That was when I knew I’ve got something broken inside me. Luckily, COVID didn’t do any major harm to me, but I was one of the infected that needed to go to a hospital, to need some oxygen because I wasn’t able to breathe without coughing a lot. While there I watched as someone right next to me started losing their oxygenation abruptly and be sent to the Intensive Care Unit and not come back, to watch another man come and be left there for a while like me… Both, I have no idea if they survived it or not.

COVID-19 is real, and over half a million died in my country. I can’t help but think if my country's health care was just a little better, we could have saved at least half of those people, just because lots of people were left out of any health care. Hospitals were packed with people needing treatment for COVID, not enough doctors or nurses to care for all of them, oxygen shortage, vaccines not being developed in time, etc… So many little details that killed thousands of people…

Sometime after, a problem I couldn’t stand anymore. I huge cavity in one of my teeth was killing me and it needed to be extracted. Something that I don’t have enough money to replace…

One or two months later, I was having bellyaches. I went to a basic health unity to tell a doctor about it and little was done. Some x-rays and some medicine. The pain wasn’t going away. Tried to go to a hospital at night and, as my pain wasn’t a big deal, I was just sent home without them doing anything for me. I couldn’t stand it anymore and my family and I decided I needed a paid doctor. After all, we’ve paid over $1’000 for medicine and exams to discover I had Helicobacter pylori, a bacteria that causes gastritis and ulcers. After the treatment, it was all fine again…

However, among the exams, I was also diagnosed with hepatic steatosis, in other words, fat in my liver. And not any steatosis, it was accentuated fat, which means, I had between 20 to 50% of my liver taken by fat. I’m not the healthiest person around, but I don’t drink any alcoholic beverage at all, I’m not that overweight and it was already something to worry about…

Midway between those exams, I had a second tooth extracted because it seemed to start to get inflamed. Please, take care of your teeth.

Since I needed a diet for my liver, I tried to keep the diet changes for gastritis and try to add more healthy food, cutting on sugar as well… It was going well, even, but then that part of me that broke from the covids was resurging from time to time…

I was in the middle of the supermarket, buying some baked sfihas for my sister, and out of nowhere, I felt like I was going to die. I was having that feeling a lot and all my health complications were piling up over me. I couldn’t keep the treatment with the medicine for my liver and glucose… Oh, yeah, I also discovered I have pre-diabetes. But I couldn’t keep taking the medicine because it was too much for my brain and my anxiety was getting worse.

I tried to keep going without the medicine and keep the diet. I also couldn’t take it for too long… I started to have headaches, strange ones, having pain in different locals, small like a fingertip, one day here, one day there. Read online that it could be because I lost weight with the diet, about 8 kg in two months or so and I would need to drink more water. It worked for some time until it also wasn’t helping and I was still having headaches. Read online again that drinking too much water also can cause headaches because of the lack of sodium that goes away in the urine, and I tried to eat something saltier. Eventually, my blood pressure called up again. Yes, I also may have a problem with my blood pressure…

So yeah, I was supposed to cut sugar, fat, fried food, salt, and carbohydrates… I didn’t get anywhere happy with that and to make it worse, I can’t afford that diet… There’s little to no proper food to my diet and, if there’s any, they are overly expensive.

I tried wholegrain flour, wholegrain pasta, and wholegrain rice for my diet, and with all the headaches, I stopped with them trying to get back to my normal life – at least the headache should disappear, right? That was what I thought…

I still have some weird headache, it’s not painful lately, but if I consumed any wholegrain flour or rice, it was coming back not long after…

2021 is a nightmare to me and I’m desperately trying to get into contact with my religious side to help me calm down and wait for the best to come… I’m really trying that hard…

I didn’t want to get back to my religion this way… It makes me selfish, even though I am really in need… I don’t want to go back to a paid doctor and expend more $1000 money that I don’t own in exams and medicine… It can save my life and put an end to my suffering, but it’s just like lots of people that die every single day because they can’t afford medical care. Life is too expensive for you to keep.

If you are an outcast like me, be prepared, because you can lose your life out of nowhere like I’m losing a bit of mine every day while this headache doesn’t leave me alone… or something worse doesn’t take its place…

It could be cancer, it could be another infection, I would need to see a neurologist, I must see a hepatologist, I may need to keep an eye on my health very carefully from now on and I… Simply can’t?

Every day after I got covids became a day I wake up worried if I will die and I go to sleep worried if I will wake up.

Still, among all my prayers, I decided to write Jay and Jay. It came naturally and I wanted it to represent lots of things to me. I have no idea if I will succeed or fail like lots of other projects I had previously… But that’s all I have for now…

If, by any chance, I actually die before finishing this project, pray for me, for I have tried to do what I could do in this world and I wouldn’t like to see another project not see the light of the day…

It’s my life, and I want to live it, to meet the people I care for, to love, to be happy… even if I have fewer days in my life because I’ve got covids…

Sorry to make you read such a pitiful silly story, but I can’t deny my reality and what moved me to write this story. Let the odds be on my side at least this time…

Victorio Anthony,

November 1^st, 2021.