Covid in retirement. Did you miss me? Did you wonder where I’d gone, why there hadn’t been a retirement blog on Tuesday for the first time in nine years, in over a thousand blogs? You didn’t? Well I’ll tell you anyway because the answer is relatively straight-forward. It’s the dreaded C word.
Yes Covid, after more than two years of avoidance, both Mrs Summerhouse and I finally succumbed to the dreaded condition. They say it affects different people differently and we were living proof of this theory, I got it bad and Mrs SH, who undoubtedly caught it from me, got a milder version. Only right and proper you say.
The fact I got it bad meant that all normal activities ceased for a week. I first tested positive on Monday morning and it’s now Friday lunchtime and I’m trying to achieve a degree of normality by writing a short version (and they’ve been quite short recently anyway) of this retirement blog.
To coin a favourite expression of my mother’s when asked how she was, it’s been grim, emphasis on the word grim, was her consistent response. And so it has been. I won’t bore you with the symptoms, they are well-reported and many and let’s just say I had them all and then some.
The physical symptoms were bad but then there was the mental side of things. My brain just would not be controlled. It was all over the place with the exception of anywhere good. This was a brain that would not / could not read or watch TV or even, at its worst, listen to a podcast, it operated in loops of all the bad things in my life and some that weren’t ‘mine’ but packed in for good measure, as they say.
The usual (I guess wrestling with the monsters aka bedclothes, while sporting high temperatures) activities all applied but then there were the unpredicted bonuses, like answering questions from my well-meaning carer, aka Mrs SH not a monster.
But do you have any idea how many questions a caring carer can come up with, for example just a few – do you want your dressing gown? are you hungry/hot/ cold? Is your throat still sore? do you want to take another test now? are you drinking enough water? How are you feeling? Did you sleep well?? What’s your temperature now? That’s just a few but more to the point do you have any idea just how completely unable / unwilling the unwell person is able to answer any of them? No, I thought not.
Covid in retirement summary
In those distant days when we were living in foreign countries in some rented or exchanged accommodation and we fell ill, all I wanted was to be in my own little bedroom warm, cosy and comforted by all my familiar things around me. Well, once again be careful what you wish for because here I was in that very setting and you know what? It didn’t help a whole lot in this case. Covid at least in my version of it, didn’t seem to pander to such subtleties or nuances of being ill. No I don’t recommend this form of illness but maybe that’s just me?