Is it just me?

Is it just me, or is lifting lockdown a bit scary? I’m so unsure. The problem is that I’m an ITU nurse. I’ve seen COVID-19, I’ve met it, cursed it and cried about it. At the very beginning I didn’t believe it would be this bad. I just didn’t. Now I know better. 

The COVID-19 that I know kills people. Sometimes it feels inevitable. From the first time I meet them there is a horrible nagging feeling in my brain. It starts as I read their history, learn they are already ravaged with cancer and now they must try and fight another brutal insult.

Sometimes it’s taken us by surprise, a sudden unexpected downturn from someone who was doing well. I’ve seen experienced staff, nurses, doctors, physios huddle together, trying to make plans, trying to anticipate what this virus might do, how it might affect the person in front of them. Yet, despite the constant care, and those who have worked in ITU know, it is constant, the body fails. Even when really, somehow it shouldn’t have done. 

The COVID-19 that I know terrifies me. 

So, right now, I don’t want to take my eighteen month old to see her Grandmother for the first time in three months. But of course I do. I want to take her so badly that it aches inside of me. Her other Grandmother is gone, she passed away eight weeks ago, she didn’t die of COVID-19, buts its impact meant the occasion was marked with a funeral of eight in attendance, when it should have been eighty. 

So, I want our little girl to dance with the Grandma she has left, dance, sing, laugh, be spoilt rotten. But I'm scared. 

Someone I know recently referred to this time, this pandemic that has killed thirty eight thousand people in the UK as ‘awkward’. He called it ‘an awkward time’. For him it is awkward I guess. His business is compromised, perhaps he will lose some money. Perhaps he will have to work a little harder for the next six months, perhaps he is terrified that he will have to lay off some of his staff, it must be difficult. But he is healthy, and the COVID-19 hasn’t touched him, he hasn’t seen it in any form. So, into the office he goes, with as many of his colleagues he can muster to try and ‘get back to normal’. He thinks this awkward time is behind us. 

The COVID-19 I know isn’t awkward. It debilitates people, despite the fact they had been isolating. It runs a rapid and at times unstoppable course over a few days. It swipes people down. Knocks them off their feet. It leaves people reliant, reliant on drugs to keep their blood pressure up, machines for ventilation and filtration as their lungs and kidneys fail. But somehow, worst of all. It leaves them lonely. For many have had to endure all of this alone, without those they know and trust the most in the world. 

So, I’m struggling. I’m nervous of seeing the people I love. I’m nervous of breaking out of our little bubble, my family of three. A bubble we have created and managed and got used to. I’m nervous to go into the coffee shop and claim my free mocha, despite it being one of the things I have missed the most. I don’t want to take a walk around the garden centre just because I can. 
I will of course, I will do all of these things, but for now, I’m just too nervous. A little too scared that the COVID-19 that I know will take someone I love. 

Is it just me?