Who do I think I am?

THE last few days have ben some of the most uncomfortable in my life. I have been fortunate enough to have avoided great physical pain apart form the occasional accident on motorcycles.

COVID seems a distant past but for those who are still on the receiving end it is a real and awful thing to have. There are those for whom the mere mention of the word will send them to the keyboard or to some website to copy and paste the blurb that it is all a big conspiracy.

I would offer that they have not yet been affected by the illness, nor been in close proximity to anyone who has the illness and had to care for them. I have been relatively fit and healthy man for most of my life. I don’t smoke and rarely drink alcohol. I eat well, five a day, fresh fruit and vegetables, I watch my sugar and salt intake in fact hardly any salt and I use honey rather than sugar. I played sport, football, competed in judo, cycled and ran long distances and kept to a fighting figure into my 50’s. Not really a candidate for Covid having also had the jabs.

Four days ago I became light headed, had difficulty breathing and had a terrible headache. So much so it was all I could do just to get up. No cough, no sneezing, just a feeling of being unable to breath properly. I succumbed and went to bed. The first pain was the attack on my throat. I was unable to swallow without severe pain. We called the doctor and he prescribed some antibiotics. My care team including my wife and youngest son supplied the cold towels, lozenges, Vicks vapour rub, pain killers and some comfort. Little sleep was had over the next three nights as the pain continued and the coughing up of bile became non stop. It felt like I was monitoring my own body via a computer from the outside and I could not separate the two. It may have been delirium who knows. Maybe it is as a result of spending so much of my life in front of a computer. I just found myself wishing that it would all be O.K. soon so I could get back to living.

On the fourth day my wife implemented a Covid test and it was positive. There will be those who doubt that. Perhaps the best way to truly make them understand is to say that whatever semantics one uses, whatever medical labelling, it is real and it is terrible. I can only give immense thanks for the care of my family and the service I received from the local surgery. My thoughts are with those who may not be able to have such care, the ability to get the help they need when they need it, those in isolation, the elderly and vulnerable. As we head into a recession we move into a time when family has never been so important. When lying in bed for that long period where days merged into night in what seemed like a blink and the simplest things like a spoonful of ice cream seemed like paradise I was truly thankful for my family. I think therefore I am.