When he entered his small apartment in the Far Rockaway section of the borough and saw his three young children, their eyes longing for a fatherly hug, he fought every instinct to wrap his arms around them.
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He Had Coronavirus. Now He's Jobless and Afraid to Hug His Children.
NEW YORK — It was not the joyous homecoming Fatehi Darhan had dreamed about while he lay alone for two weeks in a hospital room in Queens, fighting the coronavirus. He came close to death.
He Had Coronavirus. Now He's Jobless and Afraid to Hug His Children.
“I froze,” Darhan, 34, said. “I wanted to hug them, but it did not feel safe. I don’t know when I would feel safe hugging them again.”
Darhan’s misgivings underscore the difficulties of returning to normal life after surviving a disease that has changed almost every aspect of living in New York City.
Nearly a month after he became the first Queens resident to test positive for the virus, Darhan is also worried about how long he can pay his monthly bills. He has lost his job as an Uber driver and has no idea what is next.
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Like Darhan, many survivors say they are starting to realize the ramifications of surviving the illness, from lost work to severe anxiety.
The latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that people recovering from the virus no longer need to isolate themselves if they have had no fever for 6 days without taking medicine. But the advice has been changing as the authorities learn more about the outbreak, and Darhan, traumatized by his experience, is leaving nothing to chance.
His wife and their children — Ali, HaDeel and Sara — sleep in one of the two bedrooms in their apartment, he said. He is in the other. When awake, he stays at least 6 feet away during meals and anytime he shares a room with them.
Darhan, an immigrant from Yemen, said he longed to play with his children or to sit close together and watch television. But he cannot escape the fear that remnants of the virus are lingering in his body. So, he talks to them over FaceTime from a different room or several feet apart.
“I feel like I had come back from death — I had come back to life,” he said. “Now that I am back home, I feel like the nightmare isn’t over.”
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Darhan’s ordeal began Feb. 28 when he walked into the emergency room at St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway with difficulty breathing and a rising fever. Hours later, he said, he was discharged and told to follow up with his primary care doctor.
But when he returned home, he found it hard to rest, he said. His symptoms seemed to worsen. His skin burned, as if lava ran through his veins, he recalled. It felt as if invisible knives were plunging into his lungs.
“I never felt anything like this before in my life,” Darhan said, speaking in Arabic through a translator. “I knew this was different. That’s when I thought, maybe it’s coronavirus.”
He returned to St. John’s, where doctors tested him for the virus. His diagnosis prompted more than 40 hospital staff members and Darhan’s immediately family members to isolate themselves for two weeks, hospital officials said. As of Friday, none had tested positive.
“If I had known I had the virus,” Darhan said, “I would not have gone home and slept there.”
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Dr. Donald Morrish, the chief medical officer at St. John’s, said that replicating the outcome of the hospital’s first patient would prove more challenging as the number of cases increased. The hospital has 257 beds, he said, and a supply shortage.
“We are competing with other hospitals for basic supplies,” Morrish said. “We don’t have an adequate number of resources. The numbers are changing minute by minute.”
Two months ago, before the coronavirus showed up in New York, Darhan began driving for Uber to support his wife and children, who are 9, 2 and 6 months old, he said. He suspected that he contracted the virus from a passenger.
“I don’t know which one exactly,” he said. “I spent most of my time in the car.”
A spokesman for Uber said drivers who test positive for the virus or are in quarantine qualify for temporary monetary compensation.
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(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.)
Moira Muntz, a spokeswoman for the New York-based Independent Drivers Guild, which represents more than 80,000 Uber drivers, said ride-hail drivers risked exposure by the nature of their work.
Another Uber driver, Anil Subba, died from complications of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, on Tuesday after picking up an airport passenger thought to have the illness, Muntz said.
The union is also offering guidance for drivers affected by the pandemic.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)
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Darhan said he knew he was lucky to have survived the disease, which has claimed hundreds of lives in New York state.
He recalled spending 16 days in an isolated hospital room. His skin burned as his temperature stayed above 100 degrees, and he had the most trouble breathing in the morning and at night. He said he often twisted his body in pain.
The loneliness, he said, added to his physical ailments. He was not allowed visitors, aside from the suited-up doctors and nurses treating him.
“I was praying and asking God to make me better,” he said. “I kept dreaming that I was hugging my family. I was dreaming of the day I would see them again.”
By Day 9, his symptoms began to slowly subside. A week later, he said, he was discharged after they had all but dissipated.
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He said he wanted “people to see that this is serious, but you can recover.”
But with his return to good health came new worries. He said he lost his job because Uber blocked him from working after his positive test.
He is not sure how he will support his family. His rent and other monthly expenses total about $1,500.
“There aren’t any jobs out there,” he said. “Everything is shut down.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times .
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