Covid days...

I’m just surfacing from a week bedridden with COVID.

I've had to face head on into a lot over the last 10 days.. my own arrogance and assumptions as well as reflecting on times so long distant that they've ceased being memories!

This all started when my husband tested positive for covid 10 days ago.  He hadn't been feeling great for a few days but none of the 'usual' covid symptoms so neither of us thought to test.

I was a little worried - he does fewer of 'all the right things' than I do - but he is double jabbed so I knew he was likely fine.

As for myself I though I would have an easy time of it - if I tested positive at all.  I was pretty sure I had covid in March 2020 when my son brought it home from school - but at that time only felt unwell for a day and had a cough for a couple of weeks.  This time round double jabbed i though I would probably not even have that.  

After all I do lots of  'the right things' - I focus on my gut health eating 30+ plant foods every week, do yoga or some other exercise on a daily basis, get outside, eat well... etc I'm not a saint but I figured that I'm in pretty good shape!

How wrong I was!  After a couple of days my husband was clearly feeling much better - and continued on an upward trend.

I meanwhile took a couple of days to test positive - but then spent the best part of a week in bed with fever, headache, aches and pains. Every time I convinced myself I was feeling better I had to beat a retreat to my bed - feeling very sorry for myself.

So what went wrong?

Why given that I’m seemingly ‘so healthy’ and doing ‘all the right things’ did I come off worse than my husband, and feeling so poorly.

Well this time has helped me look back on my time as a child/young adult.  I recalled multiple UTIs as a child - probably involving courses of antibiotics.  We know the damage these can do to our gut microbiome - and through that our immune system.  Perhaps those were the reason that as a teenager / young adult I went through many of the 'big' illnesses - Hepatitis, Glandular fever, multiple kidney infections, appendicitis.

I've forgotten all this over the years.  I was in a place where because I 'looked good' and 'did the right things' I believed that I was strong, resiliant and covid would bounce off me. 

This time has been a lesson that what we see on the outside doesn't tell the whole story.  That we need to dig down to uncover the real truth.

And that our health is a constant ‘work in progress’ - we truly are only as good as the food we eat, the work we put in and the care we take.

I know that well from working with Clients - it's why I spend so much time upfront getting the full picture.  But it's so easy to forget when you apply it to yourself!

Photo by www.emmajackson.co.uk