Welcome to this week’s Grateful Heart Monday, where I just want to offer my piece of gratitude for something that’s simple to write, but wasn’t simple to heal from, and that being for finally feeling just about fully recovered from contracting COVID-19 after so long of dealing with symptoms from it.
COVID-19 is like the engine that could. It just keeps on going and going and going, making the person regularly believe at times it may never go away. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being as severe as one could get with the virus, I made it all the way up to about a 7, coming just short of having those massive breathing issues that many others faced. I am quite thankful that my case of COVID never got that bad and have an incredible amount of compassion now for those who reached an 8, 9, or 10 with it, who landed in a hospital, many of which never even came home having perished from it.
Having been one of the lucky ones who did recover from COVID, I’m absolutely feeling thankful for that and am no longer taking this pandemic lightly like I once did. While I still have some minor smell/taste and dermatological issues that arose out of COVID, I can safely say now that the worst of it is truly over for me at least. There were countless moments though that this virus made me really question whether its symptoms would be permanent, especially when my severe hypochondria got the best of my thinking.
Now that I’m much better, I must say that the worst thing I ever did while suffering from COVID was most definitely read all the stuff about the virus on the web. While it can probably overwhelm anyone given all those worst-case scenarios out there, for someone with severe hypochondria like me, a guy who has spent countless moments obsessing in my brain with incessant worrying around my health, it totally exacerbated all of my COVID symptoms the more I read about it. So, I absolutely am thankful I can report now that I made it through something my brain told me repeatedly I wasn’t going to.
The fact is, getting COVID-19 is no joke. For some, it has lasted for many months, while others, even after nine months or more, are still reporting to have significant lingering effects from it. That’s why I consider myself blessed and grateful that I am feeling much better now, especially because this virus didn’t land me, or my partner who had it as well, in the emergency room, or worse.
So, in the end, I am grateful for all the lessons I learned in humility from contracting this virus given how I had been handling it with kid gloves prior, but I’m filled with even more gratitude for having survived and healed from it now. It’s something I don’t take lightly and most definitely deserving of being the focus of today’s Grateful Heart Monday.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
