I contracted Covid and now I like showers.

I made this post when I was in bed on day five after I contracted Covid. I will no doubt share other experiences around my A and E visits, the breathlessness and the slow recovery.

I’ve always been that person who dips in and out of showers resembling some kind of bird on hot coals. It’s not that I am unclean, it’s more that I don’t carve out the time for a shower or long baths like my husband affords himself ( every Sunday or after training on a Tuesday. It’s a cert) .

Until now that is Autumn 2020. I am day 5 into coronavirus and although my head feels like it is caught between a vice, I have decided I quite like showers, Relatively long showers at that.

I stand in my weak carcass of a body aware of every feeling, the sensation of the water on my cold feeling forehead, not from having a temperature but from the pain of the aforementioned head vice that has gripped me since last Wednesday. It’s claws have my head around the temples and each of my front six teeth is familiar with its presence.

I never before had felt my cheekbones. Until the day I stood over the past week feeling my own skull and all the bones on my face, tears dripping down my face mixed with warm shower rain. I even became aware of the little dip behind my ear lob at the top of my neck. Sickness and incredible weakness makes us aware of the body we live in. Right now I am hyper aware.

I look at my feet as they barely hold me during these long showers and I feel sorry for them. I feel bad that they only get a break when I am forced off my feet. When something like coronavirus pulls me down. Each toe looking up at me, water trenching their base. I’m thankful for them.

That wasn’t the case the first two days after contracting coronavirus. Even the day I received the news that I had tested positive, I sat on the edge while the water cut through my frail body which had gone into full defence mode.

Uncontrollable trembling combined with the shock of fitting a Northern Ireland covid statistic and the crunching pain in my chest as my breathing deteriorated. That day I had a shower that I will remember and never to forget.

I’ve been struck by grief with the loss of a parent, miscarriage, refusals from job interviews, bullying, post natal depression to name a few experiences yet never before has a shower drawn me in to help me contemplate and to settle in