Longevity logo

The COVID Experience

How life changed and made me appreciate it more

By Karen CPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
Like
The COVID Experience
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

I have done all the right things, or so I thought. Don’t go out without a mask. I wear that damn thing for more hours in my day than I care to count. Wash your hands. More than usual, and I am a hand washer normally. Use hand sanitiser. No thank you. I am allergic to most of it. I can feel the toxicity of it enter my body when I do use it because I have to. Like entering some establishments who won't let you in without sanitizing your hands.

The list of symptoms most people talked about, just seemed like the flu. Or so I thought.

Until I found myself on a Sunday night not feeling well at all and by Monday morning I knew that I’d caught this dreaded virus.

Never in my life have I ever felt so cold. If I describe it to you as this feeling that my bones, all the way through were so cold I didn’t believe they would ever feel warm again. “Chilled to the bone”, you’ve heard that saying right?

Well, that was the feeling. I didn’t have the chills I was just chilled to my core.

Warmth. It is something we take for granted each and every day. We see the sun. We feel its warmth. It's hard to imagine living and being okay in a world without warmth. In fact, I don’t think it’s possible.

The next symptom was this feeling of tiredness. And I don’t just mean feeling a bit tired and deciding I was going to have an early night for a change, I mean tired to the extent that all I wanted to do was sleep.

Well, okay, that makes sense when you’re ill right. You need to sleep for your body to repair and heal itself. But what if, when you slept you were in this space of not being able to wake up? A place where you could hear the outside world and yet it didn’t seem possible to open your eyes and wake into that space.

That was it. That was my experience. It was a scary place to be for a period of time. I had three or four days of this, and it seemed that the more I slept the more I wanted to sleep and the less I felt like waking.

Not waking. Is this what happens when someone dies? Do they just get into this space of not wanting or being able to wake up? I’ve wondered.

I also thought about the fact that I live alone. So there is no one that comes to check on me on a regular basis. So, what if I went to sleep and didn’t wake up, who would know? Or perhaps, how many days would it be before someone found me?

So not only does this virus take away warmth it also takes away our ability to live in the world on a day-to-day basis. It shuts down our ability to wake into this human body and have a daily experience.

The next strange thing to happen was that all sense of taste disappeared. Sure I was eating food and drinking things, but I couldn’t taste them. Nothing. No enjoyment from the flavour of bergamot that comes with drinking Earl Grey Tea.

No, joy at the flavour of fresh fruit, or pasta with pesto sauce. There was just no flavour, to anything.

That’s the third pleasure of living taken away. No warmth. No waking moment. No taste.

Then of course there’s the cough. That persistent thing that drives you mad because it’s not there all the time and yet it is annoyingly so when you want it to go away. My mother is concerned that at any given time it could become dangerous and become something more serious on my lungs.

I guess that’s why some people end up hospitalized from it. I read somewhere that this covid thing creates holes in a person's lungs. That’s how they can tell afterwards that you have had it.

It’s kind of a funny thought that picture of me walking around with holes in my lungs. I’m guessing they will only be tiny holes, otherwise, I couldn’t continue to breathe, and holes none the less.

Well, they’ll be added to the scars I have from having lived through SARS many years back. Hey, do I get a ‘All-Star’ badge for that? Now having survived two major viruses that created pandemics. Not sure why not.

If anyone laughs at this COVID virus, they need to think twice. Whoever or however this virus came about it sure hit the key areas in life that make life worth living… and takes them away. Thank goodness it’s something you can recover from.

I now appreciate waking up every day even more. And for those people that didn’t. I get it. It wasn’t necessarily a choice you had.

humanity
Like

About the Creator

Karen C

I love writing! I'm a cat person, not a dog lover. Paper books over kindle. Walks outside over time spent in the gym. Australian by birth and proud of it. Crazy Colorado Avalanche fanatic. Hockey is such fun to watch.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.