With Covid Returning, It Brings With It Lessons To Hold Onto
I thought we were going to make it through.
As far as we knew, my son and I had not had covid. Early on in 2020, we were both incredibly sick with something that could’ve been covid, but we weren’t sure because, well, at that point, nobody was testing for covid, and it wasn’t until months later that the symptoms resonated with what was being reported.
Both of us are vaccinated.
Both of us were pretty darn careful.
But as the months of this year started to unfold, and covid faded out of the headlines, we figured we were past it.
Nope.
About a month back, my son began a weekend with a scratchy throat, and ended it late on a Sunday night with a fever approaching 104 and a trip to the ER.
The diagnosis? Of course. Covid.
Over the next week, I took care of him. Thankfully, I have two jobs which allow me to work from home. When you’re a writer you can pretty much work from anywhere. And so, I was able to stay home and quarantine with him and take care of him.
During that week, we both took vitamins and zinc daily, made sure we got plenty of rest, drank plenty of water, drank a lot of ginger tea with honey, ate homemade soups with plenty of vegetables, and generally lived an incredibly healthy lifestyle. He got better, and, honestly, I felt better than I had in a long time.
Then the next week arrived. He went back to school. I went back to work.
And so returned to the ritual of waking up at 6 a.m., getting him to school, going to work, picking him up, homework and soccer practice and various other things, and then he goes to bed and I’m up until 1 a.m. and beyond finishing up my work. And there’s too much coffee in the morning and energy drinks in the evening for me just to keep up with everything.
And sure enough, two weeks of that and I wasn’t feeling as good as I was when I was in quarantine.
And that got me to thinking why we don’t care for ourselves when we’re well the same way we do when we’re sick, and if we did, would we get sick far less? Probably. So why don’t we?
Why don’t we indeed.
I just celebrated another birthday this week. And every year I try to make the typical resolutions, looking back on the year, on my life, and thinking of things I want to change and improve, goals I want to hit, things I want to do and accomplish, the memories I want to create with my son knowing full well that time is the only thing you can spend just once and trying to spend it in the best way possible.
This year, that time is going to be spent by caring for myself when I’m well the same way I did when I was sick. The same way I took care of my son when he was sick. That’s something we all should do.
Eat better.
Drink better.
Rest more.
Stay away from negativity, negative people, negative thoughts, negative situations.
Keep on a positive path. Have goals. Work towards them, incrementally, day after day, the same way you do when you’re sick and trying to get better. Just keep getting better every day.
It’s been a long pandemic. It’s been a long two years. But if I can take those lessons from it, and keep them as much as I can, then at least I’ll have learned something from the time passed.
