Breathe

It’s been a while since I last posted on my blog. I caught Covid a few weeks ago and even though I was fully vaccinated it made me quite ill for about a week. I’m so much better now but still feeling very tired. I think it will take some time for me to get my strength back.

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Breathe

There's a comfort in how we breathe,
a simple yet effective habit,
a joy I admit I'd taken for granted.
Before Covid struck me down,
when breathing felt more natural
I rarely noticed the workings,
the easy rhythm of my lungs,
how they quietly did their job
but now they feel like sieves
and need to work a little harder.
Leaning on a window open wide
I inhale the cool, still air of daybreak
on an almost Autumn morning,
breathing slower, deeper, longer
the earthy dew and heavy sky,
salt washed herbs and garden mist,
but most escapes through holes,
lost to me like a summer gone too soon.

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I know that vaccination is an emotive and decisive topic but I have to say that I’m absolutely thankful that I was fully vaccinated. Myself, my partner and our son all caught Covid, and for about five days felt the symptoms get worse and worse. We wondered when it would stop getting worse. I was concerned about my partners breathing and readied myself to seek medical help on a couple of occasions. I was so relieved when eventually the coughing started to ease and the pain in his chest and ribs lessened.

It scares me to think how much worse our experience of Covid would have been if we had not been vaccinated.