The good news by the grace of god, he is in better spirits and was smiling on facetime. the fevers are at night but go down with meds. Hopefully a few more days and he will be out. I am going to call him AJ due to HIPPA regulations.
Seeing AJ smile and be positive really made my morning. My class went very well with the help of Saniya my business analyst. We zoomed with family all over the world and it felt good.
Around 2pm, I started having chills and body ache. I at once took my temperature which was 98, but my body and eyes did not feel good. I got into the covers and thought to myself, I have Covid19. I told Saniya and she told me to stop taking my temperature every 15 minutes and told me to just try resting. I tried breathing and relaxing my mind and closed my eyes. All of a sudden, I heard a knock on our front door and opened the door to see that my food deliveries, I ordered last Saturday had finally arrived. The delivery guy looked exhausted and staying far away, I asked him how he was doing. He replied that he had been working non stop since 6am and that it was really rough. Here I was resting in my bed, while this poor guy was carrying my heavy package that were not even a necessity. I gave him a generous tip which made me feel better and then washed up and sat outside and prayed. My friends are doing a virtual prayer group. We all read a passage and pray for each other. Brilliant idea!!
After checking with AJ and discussing my symptoms, I decided what I wanted to blog about today.
STRESS : I had basically not addressed my stress at all over the past few days, and realized a bit of reflection was needed. Thinking about yesterday, I realized my stress was 8 out of 10, but I did none of the things I write about to address or alleviate the feeling itself. Not hearing from AJ in the evening got me paranoid I was jumping to awful conclusions until a friend calmed me down. Also my upcoming class that I had to teach online for the first time added to the stress! I hardly ate all day and also only slept 5 hours last night. Finally I heard the news of another one close to me testing positive which only added again to the stress. Me and Saniya discussed this notion of known VS unknown. At the start of our quarantine we were hoping we could get a test to know if we were in fact positive or just not showing extreme symptoms. Even today I kept going back to that “what if” feeling. However, Saniya reminded me that in normal times, when we think we are sick, what’s most important is taking care of ourselves, bringing our immune system up, and being kind to our bodies. In that sense, this time is trying on us, and its easy to constantly be asking ourselves if we do or do not have this ominous disease. But, considering everyone is seeming to reveal symptoms differently and to different degrees, the best we can do is continue to socially distance ourselves and protect others, and take care of our bodies. Feeding your body and mind with healthy food and thoughts is key!
After praying, I reflected and realized my symptoms don’t necessarily have to be related to Covid19 but rather my Cortisol playing havoc on my body. Cortisol is the fight or flight hormone, which helps when we are in an acute stressful or dangerous situations, like a predator coming to get us. The short term effects help our body respond to the danger by increasing our heart rate, increasing our pulse and many other effects. When the stress is chronic or continuous like a lot of us are going through now, cortisol is continuously pumped and it plays havoc on our immune system and makes us more susceptible to diseases. In fact I feel AJ had been working overtime due to the pandemic without looking after himself and therefore put himself in a position of being more susceptible to the virus. With a weakened immune system, our body cannot properly protect us.
I am going to get a full 8 hour of sleep tonight and make a healthy coconut curry soup with a side of sautéed Broccoli. I will put it on my blog tomorrow.
One idea to get through the next few week is making a 30 day calendar, and adding one relaxing thing a day. This maybe fun for kids to check of each day. Stress awareness month is April and here is last years calendar.
I would like to sign off by thanking each and every person, everywhere around the world who has reached out to us or kept our family in your duas. We feel your love. It is my hope that we as a global community can and will continue to support and pray for everyone’s strength and solace during this difficult time.