This week’s an important week for me, it’s a week of giant colossal life-affirming anniversaries. It should have been a week of celebrating and cheering on my own survival running in and out of the sea, knocking back as much sparkling water as I can take and happily writing my lover’s name in the sand.
Three years ago this week I stopped drinking, I’ve been sober ever since. Three years ago this week I broke my vow of chastity for the first time in 10 years and three years ago this week I woke up following the most dramatic radical lifesaving surgery, and I’ve done more in the last three years than in the rest of my life, so I’ve got a lot to be celebrating.
Life doesn’t always go to plan: I’m actually lying in bed with full-blown Covid. Not the slight sniffle kind with a vague headache but the full-on mega Black Death onslaught. Last time I had Covid I was in bed for three weeks, I was in a semi-like coma thing, I just slept, ached and couldn’t function, my brain had definitely gone elsewhere.
But this time, this time it’s actually hell. Every single one of my joints feels like it’s been nailed to a post, the hot and cold sweats have left me limp and lifeless unable to move or make my bed, everything at certain hours is a deluge of soaking wet. I’m lying in my own Turin shroud.
It’s actually hell. Every single one of my joints feels like it’s been nailed to a post
I wake myself up every four hours to take more paracetamol — it works, my temperature cools down.
I’m not in the furnace any more.
My cats won’t come near me.
I haven’t had a shower for three days, I can’t smell myself, but I can feel every single part of my body, it hurts.
I’M IN PAIN BUT I HAVE NO ONE TO CRY TO.
The next day I can’t take the coated sweat over my body anymore, so I hobble into the bathroom, I remove my bag, my stoma looks like it’s died, it’s grey and limp.
All of me is grey and limp. I can’t stop coughing — it’s so violent I shit myself.
I stand in the shower, the cool water surging over me, I feel like a plant that hasn’t been watered for months, I wash my hair and feel clean.
I put a clean bag on and shuffle back to my bed, within all of five or six steps I know I’ve overdone it, my heart is pounding and I feel heavy and light, I can’t breathe, I lie down on the bed and closing my eyes I think, Oh my god all I’ve been through and this could be it.
I feel myself fading…
A few hours later, I wake up and repeat my monitoring, my oxygen levels are up to 97 and my temperature is down at 39. I’m still feeling like shit but I am getting better. I laugh to myself thinking how cool that would be on my gravestone, then I think actually how stupid and pathetic and then I laugh again to myself.
I try not to be angry with myself for being ill, for getting f***ing Covid, it’s out there, there’s so much out there waiting for the weak and vulnerable.
I don’t want to be afraid, I want to live my life to the full. So, take this as a warning, next time you come prancing up to me to say hello, please don’t hug me, don’t kiss me, don’t try to kill me, just be kind and say hello.
P.S. I deeply apologise for all meetings, appointments and commitments I’ve had to cancel this week.
