Getting Well

 

It was a great week leading up to Memorial Day weekend. I had lots of plans: a day with mom, a ride with Paul, a walk with a friend and a picnic with the kids. My idea of a perfect 3 day weekend.

It started off great on Saturday – I went to my mom’s and we swam together at her community’s Olympic sized swimming pool, had a wonderful lunch at her place and then off to the movies to see Downton Abbey. It was good!

I got home at 5pm and suddenly felt exhausted! I ate leftovers for dinner and got my butt on the couch for an evening of TV. I barely moved all night.

I felt like I was sinking lower and it occurred to me that I was getting sick. I feared the motorcycle ride on Sunday would have to be postponed.

At the end of the night, one of the last things I saw on TV was a Covid commercial with the urge to get tested quickly at the first signs of symptoms.

My intuition said “Do it NOW!”

I told Paul I was going upstairs to test myself. Sure enough, it came back positive. (Insert freaked out emoji with the blue head!)

I immediately put a mask on and went into the bedroom to let Paul know and to get stuff I needed out of there. I forced myself to stay calm but we were both scared. Paul just cannot get this.

I’ve been sleeping in the guest room since then. I cancelled all my plans and alerted family and friends I had been with in the past 5 days. Good news is that ALL of them have tested negative and continue to feel good. Including Paul.

Without going into details I will tell you I was pretty sick for the first 4 days. I’m on day 5 as I write this (Wednesday) and feeling like I can breathe again. Still isolating and resting all. the. time.

I’d been vaccinated and boosted so I thought it would be very light symptoms but that was not the case. It was hard but I think the worst is over. That’s pretty good considering other stories that I’ve heard.

Please stay safe out there! Covid is not over yet.

I’m talking care of myself and Paul is taking care of me too. We are in separate areas of the house (spraying Lysol whenever I enter and leave a common area) or sitting outdoors in the yard a lot. I don’t feel isolated because we just text or call each other whenever we want to. And he prepares a meal and I just sit in the dining room while he’s in the kitchen so we can still talk.

I have a wonderful and loving support system and I’ve been very gentle with myself. I am just so grateful that mom, Paul, the kids nor any of my friends who I saw last week, got the virus. SO Grateful!!

I still don’t know where I got it. May have been shopping at Costco last Friday with no mask on. But in any case, stay safe and mask up if you don’t want to get it because you never know.

The hardest part of all this has been to just let go and surrender to the virus. Just allowing myself to be sick, be alone, not eat, not sleep, feel bad, feel pain . . . . yet not feel guilty or judge it. Just to be in it was a practice in itself. To just be.

I found that sitting inside and feeling all of that was harder than being outside. Somehow being outside, with the breeze, the sun, the birds, just made it easier to take. A mini miracle. The nature bath is a real thing. It was amazing to me.

Nature really does literally soak up the pain just a bit more. I highly recommend it.

In health and love,

Maureen

On the podcast this week . . .

My guest on the podcast this week is Randye Kaye. I met Randye a few months ago at a National Speakers Association meeting that I attended. We chatted for a few minutes and I learned she was an author and a podcast host among many other skills and talents.

One of Randye’s books is about parenting a son with schizophrenia and how she and her family have coped. I wanted to learn more so I asked her to be my guest on the show. I learned so much and I know you will too. You don’t want to miss this episode.

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