My Covid Journey
I missed the cherry blossoms this spring season. But was grateful when my client gifted me with a beautiful bouquet of flowers with some cherry blossom sprigs.
I went on a very unexpected journey this past month. Only two months ago I marveled at how good life was feeling. My gratitude list never ending… Then my father went into the hospital. He’s sort of alright now but it was definitely a little shake up and we’re still feeling the ripple effects of that and the inevitable aging parent life stress. Had barely gotten my footing and shortly thereafter I contracted COVID-19.
Generally illnesses run through me quickly and I wasn’t really that worried. I went into isolation exactly the day I should have as my biggest stress at first was whether or not I had passed along the virus to anyone else. On an emotional level, I also had a lot of shame and embarrassment that I had contracted this disease as health and well-being is my business.
Living alone, I was grateful to have my mother organize my food and of course for the never ending list of friends and clients that were willing to help me out if I needed as well. Thank you to all of my loved ones for reaching out with your love and support. I was ready to go through this process, and in fact I took the first few days to commune with this virus on a spiritual level. But as each day went on, the intensity of the fevers, nausea, coughing and shortness of breath became unrelenting, grueling and without exaggeration frightening. Crawling around my apartment holding the walls like an old lady. A few nights I wondered if I would wake up alive the next morning? My parents waiting eagerly for my morning call. The idea of death had crossed my mind many times and one day was so brutal, I think I came close. On the ninth day I had been toying with the idea of going into the hospital. I resisted my parents pleas and even my doctor’s recommendation to go into the hospital. I was embarrassed, ashamed and horrified that it had gotten to this place. I asked myself many times, how did this happen?
When the nurse on the 811 hotline asked my heart rate, I told her it was 120 and she was not enthused. Within a moment it skipped up to 154. I felt dizzy and not right and we decided it was time for me to call 911.
The hospital ended up becoming a place of safety for me. My first thought ‘I won’t die here, they will take care of me’. I feel so much gratitude for the compassionate support of all the nurses and doctors and the cleaning staff as well, at St. Paul’s that risk their own lives every day in support of sick people like me. Although I always prefer healing with more holistic and alternative medicines, I was open to whatever medicine the traditional allopathic institute had to offer. There was a gift in here as well for me in that both my parents are in the medical field, so to be fully immersed in their professional environment, it gave me deeper insight into my parents and aspects of my upbringing. I have greater respect for this world now and it’s lifesaving offerings. So all in all, I was in the hospital for eight days for Covid pneumonia, administered many different drugs, hooked up to oxygen and was finally discharged 4 weeks ago.
Once home I thought I would be recovering from hospitalization but I realized in fact that I’m still dealing with the after effects of Covid itself. I know there’s a lot of different feelings around this virus, and I’m not here to tell people what to believe but from my experience this is no regular flu but a very deadly disease worthy of declaring a pandemic... This really was the most frightening, dangerous and hardest experiences I’ve ever been through in my entire life. I’m truly grateful I made it through and to still be alive.
I don’t want to give the glossed over, picture perfect, spiritual version of what’s going on for me. Every day is hard when you’re feeling sick. Every morning I wake in a deep depression. My system depleted in a way that I’ve never experienced before. My voice hoarse and my lungs weak. And if you don’t know, if Covid has hit you hard, it’s like a roller coaster. Symptoms lingering, extreme fatigue, internal burning sensations, sweating and the craziest of all, the brain fog that’s like having cotton in your head or living in a perpetual dream. When I look back, the actual illness and being in the hospital was one of the least spiritual experiences of my life. Having said that, everything in life is spiritual. But unfortunately there was no emotional contemplation or spiritual assessment of dying. Only a purely primal, instinctual, survival state awareness. Although at one point I did started praying Hail Mary’s. But the mental energy needed, actually impeded my breathing.
Now taking the time to rest and heal is not easy mentally for a doer. So much inner dialogue around this. To go from healthy to extremely sick with the inability to work and have no idea when I will work again has been life altering. This truly has been the hardest time in my life. I feel broken on so many levels. But I’m also taking this time to look at some of my biggest and deepest life woundings. It’s hard and painful but I feel it is time to heal on the physical, emotional and spiritual level and come to new ways of being in the world that will support the person I bring to life and to be truly fully authentic in the person I show up as and in the work that I do. Those that know me well know that I am very driven. But through this experience I feel drawn to living a more joyful life in a more relaxed and full way. To learn to not only be loving and compassionate to others but to turn the love around and truly love myself. By letting go of the old pain, I can come to a place where I can accept myself completely however I am, in whatever way I show up in the world. Be it sick or healthy... To experience a deeper and richer fullness with love for myself. Letting go into life. Relaxing into and being open to life...