Our History Matters: How the pandemic started for me.

One year ago, I volunteered at an event with 500 people. This is my story of what happened next…

Do you remember what life was like in a pre-covid world?

A world where to take time off work with a cold or cough was seen as a sign of weakness and you would plod on stoically? Where you would not think twice about hugging somebody or standing near someone in a queue? Where you would not go to the doctor unless on your deathbed?…

Have you ever read a letter about what happened in your ancestor’s lives, or maybe even a more recent event? History isn’t just about famous people and how they interact with the big events, but it can also be about how people like you and me interact with that event.

One day my children’s children will hear about the 2020 Covid19 Pandemic and maybe they will wonder what it was like for their ancestors. So that is mostly why I am writing this: it is what I would like to read.

Why don’t you consider creating your own account for your future ancestors?

November 17th was a Sunday. That day I volunteered for an event with 500 people attending - an NCT Nearly New Sale in the glorious surroundings of the Winchester Guildhall. It has never occurred to me to think about the infection risk of big events and I certainly didn’t that day. My job was just to walk around and make sure everyone was doing okay, help where needed.

At the end of the event, I was pretty sore from it all, hips were aching and I was tired. I recovered fairly quickly. Four and a half days later I was at the Hyde Hall toddler group with my girls.  I had woken up feeling a bit iffy but by the time I arrived there I knew something was up as I was feeling really really sore and achy. I asked my husband to get his parents to take the girls out the next day, which they did. 

I developed a cough, small at first - I noticed with amusement that it created a bubble sensation in my chest, but I didn’t feel terrible so I just left it. I went about my life as normal. By Christmas the cough was horrible. I finally went to the doctor at the point that the dry cough was making me sick - it was the weekend before Christmas and I took a cab over to the out of hours and she said I had a chest infection and gave me antibiotics. I went back again weeks later when the antibiotics had helped but not quite completed the job.

For about 3 months, I slept sitting up on the sofa. I had been told I had a chest infection and a cough and that was that, so I carried on. When the doctor told me to rest, I explained I was a home educating mother and she laughed that knowing laugh - “rest” is limited, a luxury. I listened to someone else say how they had been a bit ill and they just took the week off their voluntary job and were eating more organically - that helped me understand more about how poverty can play a part in the recovery of illness. We aren’t poor but we don’t have the budget for all this healthy organic food.  And whilst I at least could be sure of help when my husband got home, imagine how an illness would impact on a single mother - when would they ever rest and recover?  Finance matters.

Christmas 2019 passed in a blur, I didn’t leave the house for over a week as I was too ill to move. That’s okay I told myself, next year will be better.

After Christmas had passed and the antibiotics had kicked in, I started to recover but it was slow. It was hard to move, still coughing but most of all - breathing was hard. I was breathless. By the end of January, I got my voice back properly and was feeling more energetic - enough to visit a small conference in London. As the cough was taking so long to clear up I went back to the doctor yet again. He told me “of course it will take a while to clear up, you had Pneumonia”. Well that’s the first I had heard of it.

I remember reading in the news of this new virus going through a place called Wuhan in China and of fears that it may make its way over to us. I was concerned but no one else appeared to be. I did an insta story and maybe 2% of people were concerned. 

My first mention of it on whatsapp to my husband is 31st January when I asked him if he had seen it on the news. He replied ‘Yes, not sure if we should be worried’.

We had a few weekends where there were storms that kept us in, but I did manage to fit in a photoshoot during February. I didn’t know it would be my last photoshoot this year. With Indiana in nursery 15 hrs a week, Dessi and I took the opportunity to go visit the Cathedral, and do home groups, we all went together to home ed meet up at the soft play centre in Eastleigh - a much easier journey before the train there derailed. I remember talking to some mums about this new virus. No one seemed worried.

One of the major things that changed for me was church. I stopped going when I first became ill and just never really got back going, once I could talk properly and had the energy - I was just too worried about the covid19 virus.

Sometime in March I think, before the lockdown, I both lost my sense of smell and my toe went purple. The doctor said it was most probably an infection and to get back in touch if it didn’t heal, I don’t think I told them about the smell. If I had had a dry cough I’d never have known, I never really stopped coughing the whole time. It was all just so weird, who loses their sense of smell?! How does a toe go purple? I think most of my google searches at the time were about losing smell and purple toes. If only I knew then what I know now.

We got through Mothering Sunday, we wondered what was going to happen. We had booked to stay in London over Easter but the cogs were slowly turning, even as we lived our day to day life. I managed to get a desk for my husband's computer on the off chance he would have to work from home, still no one quite believed it. From about the 16th March, I pretty much refused to go to groups or activities.

On that last photoshoot, I had accidentally left a lens behind, a kind photographer friend collected it for me and I had arranged to meet her at Paddington Station in London to retrieve the lens. The atmosphere was changing, someone coughed on the train and made a comment about food going down the wrong way - otherwise there was silence in the air.

On the 23rd of March, Lockdown Began. We stayed home.