Today marks one year since I was first diagnosed with Covid-19.  I had just returned to my workplace as  a registered nurse in a care home. A Care home which had become my second home in the United Kingdom. This was after having had a brief break in Kenya. You can read Through My Covid-19 Eyes here https://www.catemimi.com/archive-blogs/.  What I went through was a mishmash of uncertainties coupled with just the right amount of fear of death and garnished with personal vignettes of hopelessness.

It is one thing to contract a new disease, it is an entirely different ballgame to contract a killer novel virus in the line of duty. My recovery from Covid-19 has not been easy. My doctor still feels that I am dealing with post-Covid-19 symptoms or what they have creatively nicknamed Long Covid. There are moments I want to believe her and others when I am so upbeat that her words have nothing on me.

Anyhow, as the calendar curtain falls on the Month of May, #MentalHealthAwareness campaign that we have been marking goes with it. Yet when we discuss mental well-being, one month is not enough to address everything involved. This is especially true with Covid-19 effects.  Many people near and dear, far and  strange have admitted to me in more ways than one that there has been an inherent stigmatization once someone contracts Covid-19. That is not all, as we are advocating for covid-19 vaccination, we have divided the universe into Us versus them. Us being we who are getting vaccinated and them being those who out of their own volition decline to get vaccinated.

It is sad to me. Cheerless because the language of acceptance and tolerance has been drowned. We only remember it when we want to be accepted and tolerated and not when others need the same. This breaks my heart because it was not until August of 2020 that I tested negative for Covid-19. I kept doing Covid-19 tests every chance I could get since my symptoms seemed to disappear after 10 days in the month of May. Every time I would get a positive Covid-19 result and  my heart would sink more. It meant more social isolation at work.

At the care home, my worry was that I could transmit Covid-19 to my colleagues and especially my very vulnerable residents. As if on cue, my colleagues avoided me. It did not help that the resident I had interacted with before I was declared Covid-19 positive passed on. The first words I heard when I returned to work were , “Catherine it was not your fault,” this was from one colleague.

It bothered me why she would say to me that my resident’s death was not my fault. I had not even thought about it being my fault in the first place. I would later come to understand that that was the grapevine at the care home. That Nurse Catherine was the reason there was Covid-19 at the care home. Never mind this monster disease was already at a community transmission level. Ignore the fact that members of the African communities, Asians and other minority groups were particularly vulnerable in the United Kingdom to contracting Covid-19.  There is ignorance about a disease, and then there is ignorance about a disease from healthcare workers. That one slaps differently.

I had expected support. I had hoped for a moment of education to understand why I was vulnerable just because I am an African. I had hoped for staff information meetings on how to support those of us that covid-19 seemed to be out to get. It was not to be. I faced rejection and custom-made stigmatization.

Public Health agencies within my area had reassured me (and my employer) that I could take weeks to test negative for Covid-19 but as long as I was not symptomatic, I could not pass the infection to anyone. This is because the dead remnants of the virus would the time to be cleared by my immune system. This did not happen to everyone. Somehow it chose to happen to me.  I was the Chosen One.

That was solace enough until the bouts of intractable cough attacked me. I could be administering medication and then the cough starts. I could cough for a minimum of two uninterrupted minutes. You could be giving me updates abut a resident and then out of the blues I start coughing and gasping for air. Then it would end as dramatically as it had started.  That did not inspire confidence in my colleagues or even in myself. I approached my GP (General Physician) who interestingly did not know what to do with me. He ordered several chest X-rays which came back as clear as an African sky at noon. I underwent breathing tests some of which I only learnt in nursing school.

Every doctor I interacted with viewed me as a case study. Uh-oh, I felt like a guinea pig myself. They put me on high does of some anti-inflammatory medications. I had an inhaler, antibiotics and various medications to steam my airways. I think they just wanted to see which one would work. I had no peace at work. I resorted to eating alone and working alone. I cried every minute I could get. If I was not busy working, I was busy crying. Either way I was busy.  I longed to be in Kenya. Near my people. People that would at the least make me a zinger of honey, ginger and lemon and call it dawa (medicine in Swahili).

I remember this morning when I was crying in a resident’s bathroom after walking in on my workmates in a heated discussion of who would come to work with me in that resident’s room as they were feeling  unsafe in my presence. They were , for that moment, unbelievably irritable co-workers whom I irritated unbelievably. I longed for their former selves. People that I had enjoyed working with. Dedicated colleagues who had made every shift worth the effort felt confused.

Being employed in the private sector meant that I get paid only for work done. Covid-19 made me perpetually lethargic and low in spirits. I needed to stay away from work for several days. On the days I was too ill to get out of my bed, I called in sick at work. That meant that I only get paid a statutory sick pay which is less that 100 pounds a week. This broke me financially.  I come from a  family that dictates that for me to ask my parents for financial help, they would have to take a loan or sell both their kidneys and the left lobe of the liver. Still, that would not be enough. I struggled to make ends meet.

There Were Happy Days

There were some bright moments. Little things that helped me cope. I call them my personal moments of God’s manifestation. I will not apologize for being a Christian here. I believe God used all of these moments to remind me that no matter what happens down here, He has it figured out Up there.

My landlord TC reduced the rent of my flat. When she learnt what had happened to me, she cut back the rent by a quarter. This helped me adjust to the new normal. Further, the United Kingdom government made a decree that prohibited eviction due to rent arrears. We as tenants were granted a full six months’ grace period. Not that I needed six months, but this helped take off accommodation worries from my head. The nursing union I subscribe to would later fight for my colleagues and I to get compensated for the days we missed work due to Covid-19. I eventually received my full pay.

My friends in Kenya were very helpful. Dr. Mary , a paediatrician in Kenya and one of the finest ladies I know, followed up my coughing issue till I was free from it in September 2020. She contacted people I never knew she was in contact with. She video-chatted me and told me not to take some of the self-prescribed cough tinctures I had bought. This helped tone down my anxiety. She has continued to follow up. I am not sure how the cough disappeared. It just did!

There is a friend of mine whose name will be MM for the purposes of confidentiality. She paid my house rent for the period that I did not have  a decent salary after missing work. She converted Kenyan money into pounds for my sake, just like she had done before I left Kenya with no money to my name. Speak of destiny connectors. MM is one.  She was the one to comfort my siblings especially two of my sisters when they learnt of my situation. She was the miracle my family needed.

She stood in the gap reassuring my sisters that I would be alright. On the other hand, reassuring me that they would be just fine. I hated myself for making them worry over me. I wanted to take it back. Too late. MM knew of the tight bond my siblings and I share. She took them under her wings and managed them like the administrator she is. She was there when I just could not be. I remain forever indebted.

Finally, I found solace in words. I have always known that one way to calm myself down is to write. This is how this blog was born—an attempt to soothe my turbulent emotions before Covid-19. After Covid-19 diagnosis, I have written more than I ever had. I had to learn how to write like nobody is reading. To play my music in an empty room. This I have done since then.

I do not know what your mind is dealing with right now, I hope that just like me, you can pick out little moments of good within bad times. That you can count positive things that have happened even if you have been beaten and bent out of shape. These, friends and family, are the little stars we need in a dark night. These are reminders that well, it could have been worse.

UPDATE: I still get unexplained lethargy now and again. This I have learnt to deal with by waking. Walking is my chosen form of exercise. I only need music in my ears and voila I am clocking ten or so kilometres. I always feel more energetic after my walks. It is my personal heart start.

I started to willingly eat better. I have added more vegetables and fruits to my diet. You will be surprided by the wide array of vegetables one can choose from here. I do not miss my Vitamin D supplements. Why because we do not have much sunlight in the United Kingdom.

Even if we did, Africans do not effectively absorb rays from the sun because we have high levels of melanin. Iridescent rays of the sun are a good source of Vitamin D. I will explain the process involved in future discussions.  Vitamin D has a role in facilitating normal function of the immune system. This is besides helping in the regulation of calcium and phosphorous for healthy bones.

Happy Covidversary to me.