2. Apr, 2020

Tsunami of sickness

By now many of you are feeling the effects of social isolation and finding it more difficult than you ever realised.

Not being able to participate in the things you love can have a damaging effect on your mental health, so much so that the government has recognised this and responded in kind by increasing funding to mental health services to help people negotiate the crises we now find ourselves in.

The full impact of Covid-19 has yet to be seen but I can only assume this tsunami of sickness and economic instability will be with us for some time to come.

I don’t think I have spoken to a person of recent days who hasn’t remarked how scared and insecure they feel in such rapidly changing times.

So, you’ve lost your job or been stood down, you now find yourself confined within the four walls of your home. You are unable to go out and visit friends and socialise. Just going to the supermarket becomes a mammoth effort by the time you sanitise your environment before and after your trip.

Money is in short supply because of your now lack of job security. You live in fear because you have no idea what your future holds. You begin to become overwhelmed because your usually stable self-identity has now come into question. You start to wonder whether the whole world is against you and you feel a lack of motivation seeping in. Why bother to get out of bed...you have no place to be.

The lack of routine throws your days into disarray. Why shower? Why eat? Mounting anger rises like bile in your throat and you wonder why it’s there. Why feel anger and creeping despair?

Okay, now imagine that along with all this you experience a decaying ache in every muscle and bone in your body, you cannot stand up for more than a few minutes without needing to lie back down. And when you do stand you feel like a stooped old man carrying a full potato sack strapped squarely between his shoulder blades. Your pulse races, your muscles twitch and nerves scream, sending shockwaves up your spine to your head where they circle your brain making it impossible for you to think.

Looking at the world as if through frosted glass you endeavour to keep up unsuccessfully with what’s going on around you. Your body responds to this alternate reality by pumping adrenaline through your veins as if it were blood, so now you are wired yet bone wearily tired. But sleep...ha...you can’t sleep because that adrenaline is like cocaine to your brain...a stimulant you cannot come down from in order to sleep, so you lie in bed awake for hours until maybe you are lucky enough to fall into a fitful and unrefreshing slumber. Most days it feels like years since you have slept at all.

When all that adrenaline coursing through your veins dwindles, the lactic acid remains and you are left permanently feeling like you have just run a marathon. The post-marathon crash can be so severe it can leave you in bed for weeks to months at a time, and the mental toll of this incapacity can be devastating.

You only wish you could take a pill to help with the pain, but there are no medications, no antibiotic to heal this permanent flu-like illness that you suffer. Bright lights and loud noises assault you like you have just been robbed and held at gunpoint, but there is nowhere to run because running is impossible.

Your only option is to pace and manage, to self-isolate, to hibernate.

You have just walked a few feet in the shoes of a chronically ill person. The visible yet invisible victims of chronic disease whose lives are dictated to them not by any government, but by their bodies lack of ability to function normally. They yell silent screams behind closed doors.

They are an army of wounded warriors and are in the fight of their life. Yet although bruised and broken they carry on with very little support and recognition from the government and many are frequently invalidated by health professionals. Even friends and family find it difficult to really understand their struggle.

So, now is the time for you to open your eyes to them, spare a little thought, as you sample just a little of what is imposed on them daily, because this is not an imposition to them, nor just a few weeks stuck in a luxury 5-star hotel with meals delivered to their door. They don’t just live in fear and uncertainty about where the next few months will take them, they face a lifetime of pain and heartache and will quite possibly grapple with their own mortality every minute of every day for the rest of their uncertain lives.