Remembering Covid Lockdown

 

The Covid Lockdown period seems like a million years ago now, but not sure if you also feel that 2 years of your life disappeared, and you can't remember what happened in those two years?

There are so many people especially the elderly that were affected detrimentally by Covid, and so many of them that passed away.   I guess we were the lucky ones who were able to work from home, but it was hard on my daughter who did half of her transition year and her final 2 years of schooling at home.  She was also affected by a boy in her class who had an aneurysm.  He woke up one morning with a headache and within an hour he was on life support in the hospital, only 18 years old an only child and so much to live for. 

However, there are so many stories like that, again I was the lucky one – I have never put this down in writing, but in 2019 early March I got Pneumonia, after a trip to the Clinic and loads of medicine, I do not remember what happened as it felt like an out of body experience.   That happened on a Friday evening, I cannot remember anything about the weekend, on the Monday my husband left me to sleep and went to work, when he could not get hold of me on the phone and felt that something was wrong he came home, to find me collapsed on the bedroom floor.

He called the Ambulance who were there within minutes, they had to resuscitate me and put 2 main lines in the sides of my neck.  Apparently, they had to resuscitate me again on the way to the hospital.  I was in ICU in a coma.  When I woke up 10 days later, it was St. Patrick’s Day as “D” had been at the hospital everyday talking to me, and on this day, I woke up with him telling me that our daughter had gone to the St. Patrick’s Day parade in the city.  He was also telling me that everyone was praying for me, and I just thought WTF is he talking about.

I probably only realized a few days later, I had no clue what was going on or why I was in the hospital, but I was on a respirator and the hospital had done so much to save my life.   Now most people think, or I certainly did, that when you come out of a coma you can just get up and get on with it.  Well, I did learn the hard way!  I had to learn to walk, talk, eat, and do everything myself again.

After having spent two weeks in ICU, I spent another 2 weeks in a private ward getting rehabilitation every day.  All the holidays I spent in the hospital, Mother’s Day, my birthday, I was home for Easter thank goodness and then home for another month recuperating.   By this time, I had run out of paid sick leave, so really wanted to get back to the office, the Occupational therapist suggested against it and put me on a phased return to work.

Not long after I returned to work I had a month off as I had booked a trip to SA for the July, it was the last family holiday that we would go on all together.
I returned to work in the August which I think was far too soon, my body and my mind had not fully recovered from the Ordeal.  Then 7 months later Covid hit (although it was around a lot longer than that as I am sure that is what I had).  We went into Lockdown exactly a year after I had ended up in ICU, it was one of the BEST things that could ever have happened to ME!  I had no stress; I could plan my day with 4 or 5 walks a day.  

When we were able to travel locally, D & I also did a few trips around Ireland and stayed at some magnificent places. Emily had asked for a cat while we were in Lockdown, so this meant that we either had to get a cat sitter or someone had to stay home.  Worked out well (sometimes).  But that is a whole other story about teenage parties!!!

I am so grateful to have had Lockdown to recuperate fully from my ordeal in 2019, but I am sad for those people that it effected in a different way.  I am sad because we lost so many of our elderly relatives during that time.

What do you remember?  Besides watching an awful lot of Television, watching WHO on a daily basis told how bad it was and how many people have it and have died.  Boris Johnson having parties during Lockdown, Donald Trump saying it was all a Hoax to start with – was it, were the pharmaceutical companies just profiteering from this?  There are so many unanswered questions which I guess will take years before we find out the truth!