So it has been a while since I last blogged. There are many reasons for this; busy life with small children, renovating our home, covid crisis, several family members dying and I am also just a bit lazy when it comes to getting down to actually writing things. It is a long-held trait of mine. I found school books from my primary school years with only one or two pages actually written on! No idea how I got away with that or, in fact, how I got to where I am now! Still, here I am so I will see if I can change a habit of a lifetime and actually knuckle down and do some writing.
Currently, I am in the fun part of covid infection – the ‘so over it but still too tired to be normal’ part. Basically, I continue to have a heavy cold, tight chest and headache. And I need to be in bed by 7pm or all hope is lost for tomorrow! Covid has been such a big part of my life for the past 2 years and I have been both surprised and pleased not to have personally encountered it that when it actually arrived, I felt quite taken aback.
The first day I knew I had covid was my 40th birthday happy birthday to me – best gift ever! I was totally in denial as I felt so perfectly well, I only did the test as my son had been sick and I was trying to convince him to join me in testing. In fact, I actually bragged about how I felt so well so the course of 2 vaccines and then my booster must be keeping me well in the face of this illness which has taken the lives of so many during the past few years. That outpouring of thoughts came back to bite me that night as I lay in bed, shivering with fevers, feeling sick with a numbing headache and sore, dry throat and snot pouring out of me from any orifice available.
Day 2 and I couldn’t breathe through my nose or be up off the sofa for more than 15 minutes without feeling like I was going to collapse. Day 3 bought more lethargy following another feverish night with breathing troubles due to snot volume. It was spent supine on the sofa in front of the fire with a lot of lemsip, tea and water. Around 3 boxes of tissues later and I realised that I now cannot smell or taste anything. I can just about make out salt or spice but I think that is more of a sensation than actual taste. Good-oh. That night I slept a little better and the snot flow had definitely settled.
Day 4 and I felt a lot better generally but found out quickly that my energy levels remain low. I tried to do a few loads of washing and the sides soon fell off that plan and I found myself again sitting on the sofa with the fire on. So here I am on day 5 and whilst I feel massively improved from 3 days ago, I still feel tired and sore nosed. I look forward to seeing if I start to test negative from tomorrow to allow me to get back to work. I hope that the vaccines and booster I have had will ensure this happens as I am certainly getting bored of sitting on the sofa!
So, do I think that getting vaccinated was worth it? Well hell yes I do! I have seen how awful this fun new illness can be and how deadly it has been. I am a type 1 diabetic and so imagine how much more sick I could have been; imagine how much sooner I could have been ill and how much longer it could have taken to recover. Imagine how many less people I could have helped in the time it may have taken for me to recover. I see (face to face!!) roughly 20 people per day and call a similar number in my GP work and I work 2 days a week. That is a lot of people who would have not been helped. I know that the vaccine is not for everyone but I would use this opportunity to urge anyone who has not had it to consider taking it up.
Vaccines are important in improving public health and allow us all to live in relative freedom. For example, how many times have I seen Measles face to face in my life? Twice. Just twice. And both times, the patient was VERY ill and also either unvaccinated or partially vaccinated. 50 years ago, Measles was fierce. It was common place in the list of childhood illnesses but it was pot luck as to whether you actually made it through unscathed or at all. Now it is rare (although it is making a resurgence curtesy of unfounded research papers published in the late 80s and early 90s which have now been largely disproved.
Anyway, I’ll jump off my soap box for now and catch up soon with more aesthetics-related blog posts.
Well said.