“Anxious. Overwhelmed. Burned out. Stuck.”

A New York Times article from December 16th, 2021 headlines: “We Surveyed 1,320 Therapists, and the News Isn’t Good”.

If you’ve read it, you will remember that the story is around how our “front liners” are suffering from “an emerging health care crisis”.

It resonated with me based on the private responses that I received from my first COVID blog. I received several private messages from people who had or are still going through the “long” COVID-19 symptoms and its destabilizing effects.

Most pressing among them is this sense of being unexpectedly ostracized, shamed and being stigmatized because their experience, like mine, was severe.

My personal tête-à-tête with COVID has petitioned more compassion, patience and equanimity in my consciousness. My way of praying has changed. My meditation practice has become more of an out loud conversation with God. A very simple and direct conversation around the act of surrendering, and letting go of the many meanings that I give to things and situations.

And what happens when we surrender? We can view the Truth of what is with more clarity and clemency. 

There is no question that people are struggling with mental health issues but not all mental health issues look alike. Many of my psychiatrist/psychologist/M.D. friends are overwrought, that which the article speaks of. They are exhausted, burnt out. It has become all too much for any one person to bear. These might not be considered mental health issues per se but they certainly affect the capacity for mental health.

It seems like COVID is that irreversible drop that floweth the cupeth over. Yet before this pandemic, the fragility of our minds and thoughts was already gaunt. Our evolving affair with disorder and addiction was already at an all-time high.

We were already dealing with the overload of information via technology (remember that?!), cell phone addiction, overwhelmed by work, feeling disconnected from society, and the dangerous meta world of comparison.

COVID has certainly exacerbated the situation, in many ways yet unknown, along with an uncanny amount of somatic responses. Our highly sophisticated bodies are being forced to process feelings and emotions despite us. As Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor shares in her latest book, Whole Brain Living, “…we humans are feeling creatures who think, rather than thinking creatures who feel.”

In an unexpected way, our nervous system has been hijacked as a way of life. In mindfulness practice, we discuss having a hijacked nervous system based on trauma. It feels like our present state of living is in a constant and irrepressible state of anguish.

All of the people who reached out to me after I posted about my condition on facebook wanted to extend their love and compassion for my predicament. But there was something else that they wanted to share: their feeling of ostracization due to COVID. (You can read Matthew’s impressive and vulnerable response to my last blog here pertaining to his personal experience with this).

What I found out was that people were feeling hopelessly alone but mostly misunderstood. It appears that COVID has not only wreaked havoc in people’s bodies but also in people’s hearts and minds.

What I learned from my own experience is that perfectly good-natured people are side-swiped by the severity of the virus and lose all sense of compassion. The ongoing media circus never helps, of course, but the reality of COVID exhaustion combined with the fear and ignorance of it is perforating our hearts.

And THAT is scary.

I also want to emphasize that I don’t believe that “those” people who might react without compassion or kindness towards those who have gone through or are going through very serious bouts with COVID are inherently bad people.

My point is that now that we have more information about how this volatile virus affects people, that we might realign our compasses towards our “true” North. And, that True North (it’s worth capitalizing) is the alignment of body-mind through the heart of compassion practice.

What will it take for us to find our humanity again? How can we stop judging the “other”, the “different”? COVID did not cause our loss of human connection. It has exasperated it BUT it did not cause it.

I suppose that this blog is my cry for help. It’s me pleading with you to please reach inside your hearts and souls and slow down the judgment process that occurs within. This is my plea to you and to me, to consider your most powerful weapon in your forgiveness arsenal.

Whenever you get angry, frustrating or flat out hateful towards the “other” because they don’t believe in what you believe or if they’ve hurt you in any way, see if answering the following questions might insight a touch of grace within…

• What kind action can I take today to alleviate suffering or pain in my life?
• What can I do to elevate my thoughts and actions towards forgiveness?
• How can I integrate more acceptance in my life?
• What singular action can I take today to express kindness towards another especially if I disagree with them? 

“For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”         ― Mother Teresa.

Today, is Day 15 of my COVID-19 sickness.

Taste and smell has been completely gone for 12 days.

Cough is still ongoing.

Heavy mucous is still lodged deep inside my throat and lung lining.

I am tired 60% of the time.

I have no appetite.

I still feel disembodied. A disconnection from my bodily flesh, my body’s interpretation of conscious flesh which, for the moment, does not feel like mine. I don’t belong to me right now.

I also don’t belong to society, or to the community that I thought I belonged to.

I, like so many others, find myself alone with COVID-19, seized by its malady.

I can only analogize it to the movie, Body Snatchers.

Body and leg aches are gone.

Headache has significantly improved.

I can sleep better with the help of Melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone primarily released by the pineal gland at night, and is associated with control of the sleep–wake cycle. As a dietary supplement, I am using it for the short-term treatment of insomnia.

I stopped feeling nauseous two days ago.

I have not had diarrhea in two days.

I still feel vulnerable.

I have been humble-whooped by COVID-19.

I am in a deep state of reflection.

I feel like I will never be the same again.

I am being redirected to focus on what’s most important, significant and worthwhile.

I feel like I’m ready to let go of all the drama and toxicity in my life.

By George, I feel like I’m actually getting a piece of enlightenment bestowed upon me.

But I am not delusional, well at least not right now. (I was definitely delusional 10 days ago.) I”m guessing that many others might have had this “enlightenment” moment come upon them like the parting of Moses’ sea. Life looks very different when we’re brought to our proverbial knees, when we are fragile, vulnerable, alone and very, very sick.

I have decided to write a trilogy on the topic of COVID-19 to share my experience. My  hope is that this can assist others in better preparing should they contract COVID-19.

Blog #1 will explore

My Experience of COVID-19 & My Regimen of Supplements and Drugs.

Blog #2, will speak of:

The Stigmatization of COVID-19 and Mental Health Issues.

and Blog #3 will address:

The Mind-Body Relationship of COVID-19 and How It Has changed My Life Forever.

 

First, what I have discovered is that nobody’s body interprets the virus in the same way. Some people have fewer symptoms than others, for some people it lasts 3 to 5 days, for others like myself, I am still experiencing symptoms on Day 12 and others have shared that they are still not their “old selves” after one year of contracting the virus.

For me, the first five days were completely debilitating. I could not get out of bed, I was delirious, sweating profusely, experiencing massive body pain, insomnia, nausea, diarrhea, fever, confusion, non-stop headaches, and major loss of memory. I experienced blurry vision, and exhaustion and still do.

As of Day 6, I started to feel slightly better only to feel much worse again on Day 8 and again on Day 10. But in between days, the experience was more of a few hours of feeling terrible and then a few hours of feeling better.

COVID-19 feels like a schizophrenic house guest who is unobtrusive at times while being completely overwhelming and seriously disturbed at others. You never know which side of the virus will appear and when. One moment, you might feel like you’re on an upswing and the next, you are being beaten to your knees, unable to rise as the senseless battering drives you into oblivion.

Yup, it was that bad for me but some people reading this might find it too much. They may think that I am exaggerating, that I have a penchant for hyperbolizing.

 

But I assure you that I don’t. Not in this case. Which is why I posted my condition on Facebook and invited you, the reader, to NOT relax your mask-wearing protocols.

My suspicion is that I contracted COVID-19 at a birthday party where up to 40 people were maskless, myself included, except for one single woman.

The craziest component of this situation is that I let my guard down because I felt like “I knew these people.” And superficially, I do know “these people” but I have no idea what their lifestyles are, how many groups of people they find themselves in on any given day or if any of them had COVID-19 or not.

There was no reasoning to my actions. I just decided to let my guard down and not wear my mask. I got careless after 18 months of almost full quarantine and wearing my mask 99% of the time.

What happened there? Why did I get lackadaisical? Why did I rationalize the situation as being “safe” and “ok”?

Humans are magnificent creatures of habit. We are arrogant, pompous, privileged and ignorant. We have good intentions but we are also unaware and mindless. That was definitely me on that evening. Unaware and mindless…a woman on the loose wanting to forget about The Times Of COVID and simply have a good time without a care in the world.

Magical Realism is defined as what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe.

I feel like our planet is the “highly detailed, realistic setting” and that COVID-19 is the invader “too strange to believe”.

And yet, it cannot be more believable than when you experience its sinewy toxicity running through your veins. It’s a sly virus that has brought me to my Jesus moment, honestly thinking that death might be nearer than farther.

And so, I do not mess with an impeding virus of doom.

I received A TON of amazing information from many. You can find a lot of this information on my fb post dated from December 2nd, 2021.

 

Some of my friends sent me series of supplements and medication to assist me in my recovery. If I had been better prepared, I suspect that my condition might have improved much faster. I know that my friends and colleagues who were prepared seem to have had a much easier time of managing their condition and their recovery.

I would strongly recommend having all of the following on hand and taking the recommended dose as dietary supplements.

Here is the list:

Vitamin D (vitamin D3 5000 IU)

Vitamin C

Quercitin

Curcumin 95

Meriva 500-SF Curcumin Phytosome

OrthoMune 

Turkey Tail Immune Support (mycelium)

Reservatrol 150 Liquid Phyto-Caps (Japanese knotweed root extracts)

Zinc Picolinate

Black Seed Oil (Gaia brand)

NAC (N-Acetyl L-Cysteine) (non-essential amino acid for detoxification)

Melatonin (temporarily for insomnia)

Ivermectin

Zyrtec

Pepcid AC

If I am learning anything at all from my experience with COVID-19 is that patience and forgiveness truly are virtues. To have the patience to go through this debilitating condition without punishing myself mentally and to practice forgiveness towards myself for having wanted to have a “normal” time out, with a bunch of other people who wanted to have a “normal” time out.

You know that saying, “once burnt, twice shy”? Well, COVID-19 has burnt me to a crisp and I am not only shy, I am very, very shy. One does not reappear unscathed from such an experience.

I hope that this blog can bring some comfort and insight for those of you who have either gone through it or are wondering how to best prepare for it.

According to some researchers, everyone will contract COVID-19 at one time or another. I wish that I had been better prepared for its effects and hope that you will take heed to my blog and prepare yourself for any unfortunate possibilities.

As always, if you have any questions, insights or simply would like to share of your experience in a mindful manner, I would love to hear from you.