Beware covid has not gone way, I’ve got it!
I’m toxic! Keep your distance! After three years of avoiding it, it’s finally found me. The plague is not over.
Vaccinations and mutations of the virus means it’s not the scary disease it was three years ago, but it’s not to be taken lightly.
I thought it was bad hay fever, brought on by a huge bunch of flowers from a friend. I gave away the flowers but went on sniffing and sneezing and then feeling queasy and exhausted. I’m still recovering from hip surgery and a subsequent thrombosis so I can’t really afford extra challenges.
I ring my best friend to grumble – write about it, she says. She’ s just had it worse than me so has no sympathy. So here I am grumbling.
To be fair my poor partner, Norman, has had the worst of it. I still can’t carry food or drink, or anything really as I need two crutches to walk, so he has to help a lot.
Being part of Save Our NHS in Kent, gives me access to medical friends. GP Coral said to keep Norman a bit safer ventilate the house and stay in different rooms. So we’ve had a howling gale rushing past us for two weeks and watch telly from opposite ends of the living room. Norman has diabetes and an unreliable heart so an infection like covid could be bad news.
But what are you supposed to do if you’re disabled? If you can’t walk, for example, like me, you need help to do all the every day tasks from getting out of bed, washing, eating, moving around etc etc. You can’t wear a mask through all that so you risk passing your bugs onto anyone nearby.
That’s why so many care workers and carers had the disease in the early days – kind people just can’t abandon someone who is helpless.
Now most care falls on the hidden props of the welfare state – unpaid family and friends. And they’ve been brilliant.
So in the midst of all this coughing and aching – and grumbling – thanks to Annie for cake, Aram for flowers and eggs from his chickens, Catherine for gardening and everyone for listening, Including you!
UPDATE
After more than two weeks of testing positive (I got so fed up at one point I even tried doing the test badly to give something different from two miserable lines – no use, still positjve) I’m finally clear. Covid is very generous with its time so the cough and catarrh are only slowly retreating, and I’m hoping there’ll be no long term aftermath.
Long covid is plaguing so many people, for example my 14 year-old great niece who has missed a third of the school year with exhaustion or my 92 year-old auntie who now has a heart condition and can’t walk uphill any more. Doctors are mystified but the common factor is covid.
I got away with a lot of snot but others could be less lucky. Be careful!
