Submitted by Anonymous
Anonymous
Covid has been a nightmare and a blessing for me.
As a person who is considered clinically vulnerable (but who does not feel this way), I was told to shield to protect myself from Covid.
The initial four weeks were almost like having a holiday; the weather was great and I could relax in my garden and catch the sun. The next four included me constantly badgering my then line manager to find some way for me to be able to work at home.
I became aware that my secretarial and nursing colleagues were still having to work and were now having to pick up my work as no cover was available for some of the time. The feeling of letting my colleagues down led to a feeling of anxiety that I had never expected to feel.
Once able to work from home, I was then reliant on somebody printing off my work twice a week – this also led to an increased level of anxiety, again catching me unaware.
I lived for the daily briefing, hoping beyond hope for the numbers to decline so I could return to work and feel normal again. To cut a long story short, I now have a folder with numerous letters telling me I need to continue to shield as the return to work dates changed due to rising numbers and letters and text messages to say that I need to work from home having only a small month or two of working back in the office.
The blessing of Covid came when my fiancée had a cardiac arrest and I and my neighbours had to perform CPR until the ambulance crews arrived.
Four ambulance crews and six personnel worked on him for a number of hours and luckily for us, he survived and we are planning our wedding for 2022.
If not for Covid, my neighbours would have been at work and unavailable to help, I would have been at work and therefore returned home to find my fiancée had passed away at home alone and I would not have had the support of neighbours to keep him alive until the professionals arrived.
It does not bear thinking about the “what ifs”. Although I have found Covid to be frustrating and tiresome in terms of my own work life and the inconvenience it placed on my work colleagues and our patients, it has given me a future with my fiancée that we are both very much looking forward to.
