A week ago I went out for a walk and forgot my phone. Well, that actually isn’t quite true: I deliberately left my phone at home. As it turns out, the park behind my house is filled with birds who sing their hearts out every day but I never hear it because I always have my phone with Spotify on while I walk. I’m telling you, it’s such a loud orchestra down there; it’s absolutely beautiful to listen to and beats a podcast any day. Anyway, when I got home I found a message on my phone from my husband (who was at home when I left the house) with a photo of a stamped Moderna vaccination card. He had been trying to book a vaccination appointment by madly re-loading the Swedish vaccination booking app (it’s almost impossible to find a slot) when an appointment popped up that was just 20 minutes later on. Fortunately it was at a location quite close to our house so he jumped in the car, drove to the place and with two minutes to spare he arrived just in time to receive his first vaccination. The next day he became quite ill and it took about three days for his body to fully recover.

Then our son started to feel iffy with possible covid symptoms so he ordered a home test. Can you believe that they actually deliver covid tests to our doors with taxi cabs here in Stockholm? You order it via an app on your phone, a cab driver then delivers the test and waits outside in the car while you take it at home and then you give it straight back and the result appears in your phone within 24 hours. Incredible! Fortunately my son’s test result was negative so he could go back to school.

By now you might wonder why I write about this. Well, I noticed that I had really strong reactions to both of these things. Like unproportionally strong. First of all, I’m not proud to admit it, but I felt quite jealous of my husband that he got the vaccine before me. It’s an age-thing here in Sweden; his age group is eligible for the vaccine at the moment while mine is not yet. I feel jealous because I notice how much I long to put covid-19 and Long Covid behind me. I feel that I cannot truly put covid behind me until I have taken the vaccine and dealt with any possible side-effects that I might get from it. I want to get it over with so I know how my body will respond. Second, the fact that my husband got ill with covid-like-symptoms and my son possibly was carrying the virus again totally freaked me out. It came too close somehow, again. In my house, in my face, nowhere to escape to. It made me feel nervous and on-edge.

I’m afraid I will experience a major relapse from the vaccine that will take me weeks to recover from. I’ve read enough stories from long-haulers who confirm that this can happen unfortunately. I can’t tell you how afraid I am of falling back into that black, deep hole. Seeing my husband getting ill was such a reminder of my own experience. The tiredness that goes beyond exhaustion, the pain; I’m SO DONE with all of it! So fed up. No one should ever have to experience Long Covid and yet here we are by the tens (hundreds?) of thousands all over the world.   

So I feel that I’m in waiting somehow. I check the news several times per day to see if the vaccine booking opens up for my age group and hope that it will do so soon. In the meantime I’m slowly picking up my life again. I found myself an incredibly exciting consultancy assignment that starts in the middle of august (wohoo, I’m actually going to make some money again?!) which gives me lots of time to hopefully go through a vaccine-period while enjoying as much as I can from summertime in Sweden.

It’s so beautiful in my country at the moment, I’ve never noticed the beauty of nature and my own connection to it as strongly as I do this year. I’ve also never enjoyed the so-called small things in life as much as I do right now. Opening up the door to my garden every morning, placing pillows on the outdoor furniture, taking my book and reading while sipping some tea… This fills me with more joy than I can find words for. Also, I notice how my life is unfolding with a lot of flow at the moment. I do not effort into anything, I feel into my body every day what is happening and follow its lead as best as I can. It’s exciting to see where this is taking me!

Feeling into my body is something I’ve been doing on a whole new level since I got sick. That’s really one of the gifts of Long Covid, I feel: it forces you to listen to your body. There is nothing, absolutely NOTHING, that you can do to trick your body into doing something you want it to do when it’s occupied with covid. Forget it. It does what it does and you’re along for the ride, like it or not. If I forced my body into anything (especially during the first six months), even something small like for example taking a shower and walk up a flight of stairs within one day, my body had a relapse and it could take me days or sometimes even weeks to get back from that again. This is awful, yes, but also amazing because living life while honoring the body’s signals feels, at least for me, like I’m finally really living for real. In tune with nature, in tune with my own rhythm. No pushing, no pulling, only allowing.

I stole that last line from my wonderful yoga teacher, by the way. Through weekly Zoom-classes she has been instrumental in my recovery and continues to show me the connection between my body, mind and soul. The practice of yin yoga has become a way of life for me and I can warmly recommend it to anyone who might be curious. Check out my previous post: Yoga to read more, and check out alexandrazoehling.com if you want to know more about my teacher.

Back to what I was writing about:

It has intuitively never felt right for me to take the ‘medicine-route’ with steroids and antibiotics, etc. but all respect of course to everyone who takes medicine to combat the virus. Instead I’ve experimented a lot with my diet, given myself a huge amount of rest, exercised (taking slow walks and doing yin yoga I mean) only when it felt OK for my body and most of all I kept awareness around all my feelings and emotions. Writing about it here on this blog has been an absolute life-saver! The waves were enormous at times, but I kept on surfing and for that I’m actually a bit proud of myself. Starting Bioresonance treatments also felt right and just a week ago it was the first time since I started treatments four months ago that my body did not react to covid anymore! Major, major milestone. I still experience some lung/chest issues, my energy level is not quite back to pre-covid and I supplement zinc and magnesium like crazy because apparently my body has a deficiency of these minerals (despite having taken these as supplements since the start, I still needed to increase my intake).

So here I am today, walking in the park and waiting for the vaccine. Enjoying my freedom and the amazing things my body can do again that it wasn’t able to do just months ago. I’m so grateful for so many things! I hope my story, and stories, will give you hope and/or inspiration if you’re struggling with Long Covid yourself at the moment. Hang in there, I hereby send you a virtual hug and wish you lots of healing and health.

Thank you for reading! ♥

Photo: Oskars Sylwan – unsplash.com

This writing is part of what I call my Corona Chronicles. On this page you can find an overview of my stories since March 2020.