“I am part of a COVID team with the municipal corporation where we have to go to houses where COVID cases have been identified to sanitize them properly. My sanitation team includes some more of my colleagues and based on how big the affected property is, we are sent either alone or in pairs and groups.

I am not from the medical background or anything but was given the training by the government when COVID started in India. Initially it was thrilling and exciting and felt important too, but now with the way the cases are rising, it is becoming very stress for me. 

Everyday we have to go and sanitize atleast 3-4 properties--condominiums, houses, offices, market areas. It takes me a lot of time to just get into the suits we are given. Before getting into the suits, we have to drink up enough water and eat, so that we won’t need to eat or drink for the next 6-7 hours or atleast till the time we are on the site. It is very difficult..the suits make it very inconvenient for us to sit, or move around and then we have equipment to manage too. But that is not the biggest concern---my biggest fear is that we are walking right into the infected area!!! However much we try, we can get infected. And then the way people treat us...they will move 6 feet away from us as if we are the carriers of the virus and not the saviours. They treat us as something dirty and infected and like trash.

I managed well for the first two  months but now I have started to get so exhausted and worried that I am not able to sleep at nights. There are nights when I don’t sleep till 3:00-4:00 in the morning, and keep watching TV or am on my phone, but then I don’t even wake up late...it’s like I have lost sleep only. I don’t feel sleepy, just exhausted and tired all the time. My wife too has started to worry about my not being able to sleep since she says that I have become angrier and crankier because of this. 

But I don’t know what to do...all the time when I reach home, I keep thinking about where all I have sanitized that day, whether I touched anything, I hope my mask was well fitted, what if I am already infected, how someone spoke to me like I am some lower class person, why did he say that...all these anxious thoughts don’t seem to leave me and I can’t rest my mind and hence neither sleep comes easily to me.

I have spoken to my team leader, who has suggested me talking to the counselling helpline. I hope they give me solution to these endless long days of my life..I don’t know when the day ends and when the night starts...it is all the same for me. I don’t seem to be enjoying life anymore.