During one of my walks, I once thought how convenient it would be to create an alter-ego.
For me, it was tough to learn to understand Long Covid. One of the most challenging things I’ve experienced in my life. In coping with this alone, I needed someone more vital to help me manage. It was too hard to handle. Nor my body nor my mind was functioning the way they did before Covid.
With Covid and Long Covid, you’ll never know what happens next or when and if you get better. There is no proper diagnosis, prognosis, or treatment plan proven to work.
I understood illness with a point of departure, like having the flu. On my last day of having the flu, I always had a good day. That was the day I knew I could work the day after. And then, most of the time, I was back in balance within a week.
I have had good days coping with Long Covid. During a good day, I wanted to do all my chores I wasn’t capable of before, like the last day of the flu. And on such a day, I always thought I could go back to work the next day. Those days gave me the most difficult times because I mostly spent all my time in bed the days after. I bumped my head again against the Long Covid wall.
The past 20 months have been a search with lots of walls.
Those walls and the illness caused so many cracks in the life I was used to; I even had days I didn’t want to live anymore. I know now, these feelings are okay in my coping process.
I am going through the process of coping, learning to accept and adapt, to get out as a different person, developing a different set of skills. And I am still learning every day because Long Covid keeps unpredictable.
I think accepting and adapting is comparable with strengthening other skills when you lose, for example, your sense of sight. The extra difficulty with Long Covid, there are no prognoses yet.
The coping process, that’s what I’ve been up to the last couple of months. With the tablespoon of energy I have every day, I’ve chosen to stop blogging for a while. More blogs about my journey will be up soon. And maybe, one baby step at a time, I will become as strong as I wanted my alter-ego to be.
