12/04/2020 Happy Easter

I have always loved Easter, it has always felt optimistic to me. There is always the promise of warmer days ahead. Cherry blossom is in full bloom, there air smells fragrant with the scent of flowers, the sun feels warm on the skin and there is lots of chocolate.

Photo by Oleg Magni on Pexels.com

I woke this morning about 6 am, the sun was coming up there was a dew on the grass and the birds were in full song. What a glorious morning to lift my mood and shift my thoughts from the tragedy in the world to the beauty of the moment.

The news seems to get worse everyday, with 2000 people losing their lives in one day in the USA, sedatives used in Intensive Care in short supply in the West Midlands, and the death rate in the United Kingdom exceeding 10000. It is easy to say ‘turn the news off’ but we cannot sit in a bubble of false positivity. We have some how got to find a balance that keeps us informed without completely consuming us. It is important to be optimistic for the future without constantly looking for a silver lining that just is not there. If we constantly look for positives we will soon become disheartened and lose all sense of optimism.

I know I keep going on about it, but spending more time in the moment than in the future or the past is so important. It does give you a balanced view. Too much time in the future will always end in a loss of optimism. The future is either terrible or wonderful depending on your mindset, it is never real. What we do know about the future is that it will happen. It might be good, it might be bad, more than likely it will be both in parts as our present is. If we spend too much time in past we do nothing other than wish for a time that will never return, or be fearful to act so as not to repeat our past failures. The past is useful to use as a reference point and as a place of momentary sanctuary, but should never be a place of permanent residence. Spending time in the future is important when setting and planning goals, it is always useful to imagine your future destination, but again should not be a place of permanent residence. The present (I know I am repeating myself, but it is important) is real and therefore is the only important place of residence. So spend most of your time there. Appreciate what you have, notice what you haven’t got, be aware of what is happening in the wider world, and do what you need to do right now that will make the future that be easier for you when it becomes your present.

The sun has gone in now, it is still a lovely day, the sun will come out again, and the clouds will come back and it will rain at some point in the coming days. Things will be good and will be bad that is a given, how you respond to them is purely up to you.

I hope you have a good Easter Sunday.

Just a quick update on me, each day is easier, although I am still struggling to do anything that involves physical effort for longer than 30 minutes. Yesterday I spent the morning pottering after writing my blog. I emptied and filled the dishwasher, and made some holes in bottle tops to make a wind charm by lunchtime I was shattered, I had a headache and was breathless. I am hoping I will have more energy today, my chest is sore today but I am not overly breathless.

Take it easy today everybody, and stay safe.

11/04/2020 Preparing for the long haul

Good morning, it’s Saturday, the sun is shining Radcliffe and Maconie ( Weekend breakfast radio presenters on BBC 6 Music) are on the radio, today is starting to feel like a good day. Now there is a lot wrong with the day, which I won’t go into as it is a bit obvious, and we don’t need reminding. Now I am feeling better I am beginning to wonder how I am going to keep this up for the next month, and then how am I going to adjust to whatever we will face in the coming months.

If you have been a regular reader of my blogs most of this will feel familiar, as I have talked about how I have learned to live with my emotions and not try to deny them. Over the past 3 weeks this has been sorely tested and I know the coming months will be difficult too. With that in mind the hardest thing to deal with is the uncertainty of what we are facing.

I am finding the most important, most helpful behaviour I am adopting is simply going with the flow. I say simply, but to be honest, it may be simple to say, but it is brick hard to do. Going with the flow takes a lot of practice.

So what is going with the flow? For me it is accepting all of the emotions we experience, without exception, and knowing all emotions are fluid and if allowed to be heard and recognised will flow over you. Let me try to explain what I mean.

This morning right now I am sat with my laptop on my lap (as it was designed to be) writing my blog, drinking coffee listening to Lithium by Nirvana on the radio. I feel happy and contented. The music reminds me of happy times in Spiders Nightclub when I was younger, I love writing this blog, and I enjoy drinking coffee. All is good my emotions are positive, so it is easy for me to experience them and allow them to be. Some of us struggle with positive emotion and go into “too good to be true” mode and deny ourselves the positive emotion by looking for a catch or worrying about a catastrophe. Whenever I go abroad on holiday I always have a moment imagining the plane crashing into a side of a mountain, I then imagine getting to our destination and being told that there had been a terrible mistake and there would be nowhere for us to stay. You get the drift. We can often hijack our positive emotion by using our intuition. I know practice being in the moment when something good is happening, like right now. I practice noticing the physical sensation created by the emotion. I practice using my senses, what I am hearing right now, what I am feeling, what I am tasting, what I am smelling, and what I am seeing. I practice enjoying the moment for what it is.

I don’t know about you, but I have been conditioned from a young age to avoid pain, sadness and anger. I have always been taught that these sensations an emotions are negative, and we should always seek out positive emotions to counter these. Now pain, sadness and anger are not pleasant experiences, but they are essential and an inevitable part of life. Over the past few weeks I have experienced all of them in abundance. Now I have experienced a degree of physical pain because I have been ill, when it got too much I took paracetamol. But the pain was useful it let me know what parts of my body were effected and encouraged me to rest. Most pain no matter how unpleasant is a useful physiological response to a noxious stimuli. Emotions such as sadness, fear, anxiety, frustration, anger etc. in most circumstances (there are circumstances such as mental illness, and some neurological conditions that are not useful and will need attention of a health professional) are also useful and are a consequence of what is happening to you. Denying them or avoiding them will just prolong them and often make them bigger. It is so important to allow them to happen, accept them and understand them. I have learned to ask myself some questions about my emotions, thanks to reading Brene Brown’s and Paul McGee’s work.

I will ask myself:

What is happening to me right now?

What has caused me to feel like this?

What part did I play in this?

What could I learn from this?

What can I change?

What is beyond my control?

It will not make the emotion go away, but it allows me to understand the emotion and learn from it. It encourages me to create space in my mind for unpleasant emotions. Life is really difficult as well as being incredibly wonderful, therefore to fully appreciate life it is important to provide equal space for the good and bad. The only important aspect of life is life itself. We have to learn to live it rather than worry about it.

I found when I practice this, I can accept uncertainty far more. I able to resist the urge to attempt to predict the future, therefore the uncertainty of life at the moment worries me less. When I do start to be overwhelmed I can bring myself into the moment, and appreciate the life I am living now. After all the life we are living now is the only thing that is real.

Stay safe, be in the moment and have a good day.

10/04/2020 My Son’s Birthday

Ben my eldest is 20 today. 20! I know, hard to believe! Along with millions of others he is having a birthday in the house. He is making the best of it, but it is not the same as spending it with his friends and girlfriend. He did however point out that he had planned to be working today so he could spend next weekend with his girlfriend for her birthday. So he has got some presents, he has been for some exercise with his brother and laughed with his friends via technology, and we are going to have a takeaway later. It could be a lot worse.

I have spent most of the day sat in the garden reading. My lungs are still causing me a problem, even the short activities like emptying the dishwasher or taking out the rubbish makes me breathless, this is then accompanied by a headache and chest pain. I am not coughing as frequently as I was, so that is an improvement. A few more days of rest and I am sure I will be back to my normal self.

It was lovely sat in the garden earlier listening to the children laughing and playing in their gardens. It was so relaxing listening to the chatter of children, whilst watching the birds feed of our bird table, flying to and from the bird table and into the hedge when they heard a sound.

It can be so hard staying at home on a day like today, but so important. If you are getting the urge to go and sit in the park or go for an outing to the shops, then please pause and think. Imagine being in a hospital bed for 2 weeks struggling to breath wearing an oxygen mask, been attending to by Nurses and Doctors in masks and goggles, not being able to talk to your family. Please imagine that when you get the urge to leave you house for no good reason. It might be you in that hospital bed, or someone you love or someone you met that you passed the virus onto. Staying at home is the single most important thing you will ever do. There is nothing more important than saving someones life. For 30 years I was a nurse, and on a few occasions I have participated in actions that have saved peoples lives, I can tell you nothing compares to it. I have also cared for people that have died before their time, and that is heart wrenching, and I remember every single one of them. I am lucky, there are not too many to remember.

Please do something amazing, be a hero and stay at home.

As someone said on Facebook today, the sun will come out again, there will be another Easter, Ben will have another birthday.

Stay safe

09/04/2020 Not sure I want to speak too soon, but…

Yesterday physically I felt dreadful. The only good thing yesterday was Doris’ Wholehearted Book Club, the interaction on their really lifted my spirits. It really did put a smile on my face. For a couple of hours I didn’t really care how crap I felt and that it had been 15 days since my symptoms had started. Talking about books, that I love, and those I had never heard of was wonderful, made all the more special by the wholehearted people that joined me. At the last count we had 62 members. If you love books and just want a wholehearted chat about what you love, go on Facebook, type ‘Doris’ Wholehearted Book Club’ into the search bar and request to join. If you look like a friendly type we will let you join.

So today, dare I say it, I feel a little better (now I have been here before, albeit not 16 days in). My cough is more than yesterday but I don’t feel as breathless or tired. I took the dog for a short walk this morning for 5 minutes however and I was done in. But small victories I am on course for being fully recovered next week.

Now I am feeling a little better, I would just like to say this has been one of the worst viruses I have experienced. Now from a physical point of you it has been quite unpleasant, but the psychological effects have been terrible. The unpredictability of the symptoms is just horrible, that coupled with the widespread media coverage and knowing about the preparations being made at our local hospital and then knowing people that have been very ill and one of them losing their life has made this whole experience horrible.

Writing this diary and the overwhelmingly supportive response from all you lovely people has helped immeasurably. Being able to write about what I was feeling and working through how I was and still am managing the emotional as well as physical effects has been essential for me, and I hope it has helped some of you who are either experiencing similar symptoms or are just struggling with the whole experience. This is going to be a long haul and will continue to be very difficult, but we will get through it. I am going to continue to write a diary and publish it on this blog for as long as this crisis is on. Depending on how busy I am, it might not be everyday. I will keep sharing it on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I will also share it to the Facebook groups in Chester, Hull and Willerby and Kirk Ella for as long as they are willing to share them, also feel free to share these blogs with your friends.

Remember give yourself an anchor, something to keep you connected to who you are and what is important to you. A go to activity that makes you feel secure, happy and connected to all around you. Keep being kind to yourself and others. Keep being imaginative and creative. By the time all this is over you will be doing things that you never dreamed of before it started. Like starting an online book club.

One last thing, we still need to defeat this virus. The best way we can do that (I mean us mere mortals) is to stop the likelihood of it spreading by staying in as much as we can. I still people going out to the shops everyday. Please stop doing that! You could be spreading this virus. Please don’t go sit in the park or go and play football in the park. All of these unnecessary journeys and activities could kill someone. That someone could well be the person on the checkout at your supermarket, a bus driver, a nurse, a porter, a radiographer, a doctor, or yourself.

If you fancy a bottle of wine and you don’t have one do without. Please!

Stay Safe.

08/04/2020 Apart from the book club, today has been a blur

I woke up this morning with a tight chest and a headache (so what is new). When I looked on Facebook a good friend of mine Tracy had put a post on saying she had been struggling a little bit and was asking if anyone wanted to join an online book club as the book club that she was going to at work had finished. She had accompanied her post with a picture of 2 of my favourite books by Brene Brown. So I was hooked, and I wanted to do something positive to lift my mood. So I started a private group on Facebook called Doris’ Wholehearted Book Club. The premise of the group is to share what you are reading and the books you love. It is all about sharing and supporting each other through what we love. So far there are about 30 people in the group. If you haven’t joined seek it out and request to join. There are no themes, it is just a space to share what you are reading, and to be inspired by what other people are reading. Lets see how many people across the country and even the world we can bring together.

So that was my positive action today, the rest of the time I have laid on the sofa, feeling breathless and sore but positive and optimistic. The sun is shining, people are kind and lovely and I will be feeling better soon. Today to be honest though has passed me by as I have been sleeping a lot of the afternoon.

I am reading 2 books at the moment by the way, well trying anyway. I am struggling to pay attention for more than a few minutes. But those books are a nerdy leadership book called Turn The Ship Around by David Marquet and La Belle Sauvage (Book of Dust Volume 1) by David Pullman. If you want to get involved please join the group and share some love.

I know it is not a long one but I am knackered and this has taken me ages to write. I promise as soon as I am feeling better I will make them longer and hopefully a little more interesting.

07/04/2020 Hmmph!

Well let’s start again tomorrow!

I have felt washed out and fed up today. My cough has returned with a vengeance and driven me insane. I had a bit of a wobble this morning. Thank you to my lovely boss who helped me through it over the phone.

I don’t have a temperature and that is the crucial thing. Apparently the cough is a residual thing. So I have rested up today. At lunchtime I read an article written by @TheSumoguy via his twitter that put me on the right path. I retweeted it and he retweeted my retweet, so that cheered me up. Have a look at my twitter page or look him up to read it, it will help.

Only a short one today, I have not got a lot to say. Apart from today was pants but then again it is nearly over now.

06/04/2020 First day back at work

After nearly 2 weeks I went back to work today. Last night I had a fitful sleep, and by 5 am I was wide awake. It was a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Not so much about the work (I love my job, and my role is not front line patient care) it was more how I would cope physically. By the time I got to the bus stop my head was banging and I was breathless. After a few minutes on the bus I had recovered. It was the same walking to my office, and then walking to the drop-in. I feel like an old man. Once I am insitu and sat down I am fine. It was lovely to speak to people, and see my colleagues. From a well-being perspective going in and being useful, albeit in a small way today was restorative. There is a buzz of determination about the hospital, much more than I noticed last time I was there. Everywhere I looked I saw people working together, solving problems and looking for what they can do to make things better. It is quite humbling to watch. Us providing the support are conscious that we need to be there for all of these amazing professionals to make sure they can continue to do this in the weeks to come. It is a true team effort. Together we will overcome.

I am home now, and my head is banging again, and I am really tired. I have a lot of background work to do tomorrow, so a slightly slower pace with less moving around is required. So I am pacing myself knowing that I will be needed to be firing on all cylinders in the coming weeks.

I know a lot of you lovely people are concerned about me, but rest assured I am looking after myself.

If you are recovering pace yourself and don’t expect too much at first like I did over the weekend and ended up making myself feel fed up. Do things in stages and you will be okay.

05/04/2020 Post Viral Blues

Yesterday morning I was emotional but optimistic, I was symptom free for the second day and looking forward to being able to leave the house today, albeit just taking the dog out for a short walk. I started doing a bit more, I swept the floor and did a bit of ironing whilst watching a bit of Netflix. No matter how productive I was I just felt flat, I felt incredibly sad, and on top of that sapped of energy. When I looked forward to today, I realised that I couldn’t do what I wanted, I couldn’t come and go as I pleased, the country outside was still closed (I hate the term locked down, it feels so melodramatic, and downplays the seriousness). I think what brought it home to me was when a Challenge Cup highlights programme came on the television and the announcer said “as all sport is postponed”. ALL SPORT IS POSTPONED! ALL SPORT! ALL! The magnitude of that just completely deflated me. We are in the midst of the single most important event this century (so far) and to be frank I would rather not be. I want to be reading about this in a text book or watching a documentary about it, not living through it.

So I finished my ironing (getting ready for work next week) and felt exhausted. Exhausted! I only did some ironing and put it away. Everything ached and I felt breathless. That dropped my mood even more. How was I going to be able to go to work? I felt old and useless. By 8:30 I was in bed, I tried listening to some music, to lift my spirits. That made me feel closed in and claustrophobic, and I could feel myself starting to panic. I resorted to some simple mindfulness techniques of checking my sensations, it worked before I knew it I was asleep.

I know this post seems very negative on such a sunny day. What I am doing though is helping myself get out of this funk by writing down what I am experiencing to understand and make sense of my emotions.

When I started to recover I expected to feel better and be back to normal immediately, I didn’t. I had an expectation that everything would good, it isn’t. I was being so unrealistic it is a little embarrassing writing about it. I feel like a little boy again on my birthday. When I was young I would get so excited about my birthday and imagine all these wonderful presents, like an Evil Knieval doll and a brilliant party with me being at the centre of attention. Obviously it never quite turned out like that. So normally by about halfway through my party I would start behaving like a little shit. I was unable to manage my expectations so always felt disappointed. This is exactly what is happening to me right now. I wanted an Evil Knieval doll and got a Gullivers Travels T-Shirt and a colouring book instead.

So by writing this entry actually helps me put things into perspective, and realise I was quite ill for over a week. I just have to give myself some time and let myself off the hook. So today I am going to be kind to myself. I will take the dog for a short walk to post a letter for Janet our next door neighbour who is in her 90s later I sit in the garden and take in the sunshine. Now I am feeling better I need to step up to the plate though and play my part, that means staying in as much as is possible. Tomorrow is another day, one that I am looking forward to and dreading in equal measure, I imagine the same as everyone else.

I find writing down what I am feeling really helpful. If you are feeling down, and cannot seem to get out of it, maybe try writing it down and reading it back to yourself. You will notice all the assumptions that you make about your life, and start to understand what motivates you. You don’t have to put it out there like I do (although I find that process and the comments incredibly helpful). Keeping a journal is a wonderful way to capture the emotion of what is happening to us all. Give it a go, you don’t have to be great at writing, after all you only have to share it with people if you want to.

Have a good day today. Even though the sun is shining, please don’t go to the park or beach, stay at home, save a life.

04/04/2020 For Areema and Aimee

I know I said yesterday that I would write my diary entry in the afternoon from now on, but i got up this morning and was bored, so here I am. For today and tomorrow I will continue to write this in the morning and when I am back at work on Monday, I will start writing it in the afternoon. Yay I am back at work on Monday, as long as I have no symptoms today. In fact if I have no symptoms today I can take the dog out for a walk tomorrow. You cannot believe how exciting that sounds. After 11 days of complete quarantine just walking to the end of the street will be a treat, and on Monday I get to meet and talk to my colleagues, and do some work. It is going to take me a few days to get up to speed, but I cannot wait to start supporting our amazing staff, both clinical and non-clinical.

As you know my background is Nursing, so yesterday was really tough, as I imagine it was for all nurses and ex-nurses. Yesterday we heard that we lost 2 of our own to this dreadful disease, Areema Nasreem, and Aimee O’Rourke. Two beautiful, loving, caring Nurses, and Mothers who have been taken from us too soon. Nurses, Doctors, Physios, OTs, Radiographers, Pharmacists, Pharmacy Technicians, and all other health care professionals who have direct patient contact, have never before in the UK knowingly gone to work and put their lives at risks. For me yesterday it became real, and I was scared, not for me, I don’t have direct patient contact at the moment, but for my friends and colleagues. I am so desperate to get back to work to support them, so they can provide care in these difficult and frightening times. I have faith that we will get through this and we will save many lives, but it is important that we make sure we care for those providing the care, to secure all of our futures.

We must honour the work of healthcare professionals, we must show them how much we appreciate what they do, and what they are sacrificing. The best way to do that is to play our part in stopping this virus and preventing more people getting sick. It is really simple, only go out when you have to, stay at home, don’t be tempted to take multiple trips to the shop in a week. If you go to the shop everyday, you are increasing your risk of becoming infected and spreading that infection. You might become sick, sick enough to go to hospital, where you end up infecting a healthcare worker who is caring for you, who then becomes so sick that they end up in ICU and die. So please I beg you stay at home buy what you need in one go, if you forget something do without.

For Areema and Aimee, please stay at home, and stay safe.

03/04/2020 On the up slope

Well I have woken up this morning albeit very early starting to feel normal after 10 ten days. My cough is now infrequent and the chest pain is diminished. After I wrote yesterdays entry I felt really quite unwell and emotional. I thought I was getting worse again, and for a moment I started overthinking and scaring myself. So I spent the afternoon wallowing in my self-pity. I wasn’t a pleasant person to live with yesterday afternoon. Thankfully I feel much better today and feeling quite positive about starting back at work next week.

Today is tinged with a bit of sadness. Today would have been my niece’s wedding day. We were all looking forward to getting together as a family to celebrate Katie and Craig’s wedding. It has been over a year since all of us have been together. My brother, sister, mum, and niece and nephews all live in an around Chester, and we are over in Hull. The last time we were in Chester was before Christmas, but we did not manage to see everybody, so today would have been a chance to catch up with everybody. Its a shame but not the end of the world. Katie and Craig have postponed the wedding until the autumn. As Katie is pregnant we will have a new addition to the family and a double reason to celebrate. We have put Mum in strict quarantine until this is all over, so all will be good in the autumn, and gives us all something wonderful to look forward to.

As I have no symptoms to really speak of now, I am going to change the time of my diary entries to the afternoon or evening from now on. I did this at the beginning of this process so I could cover what my days at work had been like. So god knows how exciting tomorrows’ entry will be, describing my days moving from the front room to the kitchen, and back to the front room. Brace yourself.

I will leave you today with a reminder of how to get through each day at the moment. About a month ago I wrote a blog about how to make your organisation resilient in the face of coronavirus. It was based on the work of Diane Coutu, it works just as well for individuals and more or less sums up what I have mentioned in some of my more recent diary entries. Diane suggests to be resilient you have to possess three characteristics, and these characteristics can be worked on, we can all develop them with a bit of attention. Below is a little checklist you can use to help you remain resilient and go with the flow during these testing times.

  • Be realistic; accepting that things will not always go the way you want them or expect them to, so make plans that allow for that. Make room in your mind for the bad, distressing times, give them the space they deserve. To be happy, we have to experience sadness.
  • Have purpose; be true to what you value, understand why you do what you do. Being a parent, and working for the NHS are important to me, because they make me feel useful, which is one of my core values. Be clear what motivates you and remind yourself of that everyday. Use it as your anchor. Keep working on this, especially when you need to dig deep. I do what I do to be a valued useful member of the human race, and sometimes I have to be courageous to do that. I remind myself of that when I am struggling.
  • Be creative; there are plenty of opportunities to be creative at the moment. There are plenty of shows on the TV encouraging creativity, I noticed Jamie Oliver had a show showing us how to make meals from what we have in the cupboard. There are loads of sites on the internet doing the same. I would also encourage you to use your own imagination and come up with solutions to your own problems. What do you have that you can use differently to make life easier. If it doesn’t work, you have something to laugh about. When I have been skint over the years I am have created some dreadful meals when trying to come up with something in the cupboards, but then again I have made some great meals out of nothing. It can sometimes go back to being realistic. To get yourself in the mood for being creative, go lay down at the top of the stairs.

So there you have it, be realistic, creative and have a purpose and you will ride this storm. Hopefully most of you will be reassured that you have been doing this already. Remember you have to have all 3 characteristics to be resilient.

We’ve got this, it will pass. See you all tomorrow.