Last week, I had a close experience of Coronavirus and I wanted to share my story with you.
My husband, Ivan, became ill, tested positive for Coronavirus and required hospitalisation for 4 days. Thankfully, he is home now and recovering steadily, on his way to 100% health. It is likely that when you read my story, you have one or more of your own or of loved ones being sick to varying degrees. If that’s the case, I wish you strength and a speedy recovery.
What I want to focus on, with my story, is how aware I became of my choices and actions in this stressful and scary time.
The toughest part for me, was being isolated from my husband when he was admitted to hospital (by ambulance, two people in Hazmat suits – just like a futuristic Zombie movie). I couldn’t visit him, sit by his side and show him I’m there. Everything happened from a distance.
The medical staff were incredible with their care, patience and communication. It was clear that they knew they were carrying out both the medical care part of the process and the loving care because of the absence of family support for the patients.
I was acutely aware that there was nothing I can do to change, help or fix the situation.
In a challenging time such as this, we can get absorbed in the difficulty of it. Most of the stories we hear about are the sad ones (and there are many) and the frightening ones but there are also good news stories that we don’t get to hear about. Sometimes it’s important to pause and take note of that. We see the numbers of people who died, people who’re critically ill, or infected. In those reports, we don’t see numbers of how many people went home after hospitalisation, how many are considered to be fully recovered. I, for one, want to hear those numbers too.
As I was experiencing this last week, I cleared my calendar, stopped social media activity and posts. I didn’t send out a newsletter and didn’t release a podcast. I wanted to be fully focused on my husband, and present for my family and my own needs for the week. I was very aware of wanting to be real about how I was showing up to the world around me and not pretending everything was the same, “normal” and business as usual. It wasn’t.
And that’s why I’m writing this article.
No pearls of wisdom or advice, just my experience, what it meant to me and a small slice of life.
Life is sometimes hard. No use pretending otherwise. My favourite expression for last week was, “We can do hard things.” I read it in the book Untamed by Glennon Doyle (highly recommend it).
We can do hard things and we all have hard things to deal with. We don’t have to pretend.
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