Unconditional Love

In a world that has been turn upside down, I still just want to ME. Is that so wrong? Is that so selfish? I don’t want to change who I am. I don’t want to change my life. As this so call pandemic is in full swing, I sit today and I know that we lived through it in November. I know we had whatever it is that is going around. We are still here.

My husband was in the hospital in the midst of the flu season in November of 2019. He had open heart surgery in September when they placed the LVAD pump on his heart. He was in the hospital until November. He was sick, he had fever, his white blood cells were elevated, he had pleural effusion on the right side of his lung, he lost his sense of taste and his sense of smell was affected too, his nose was running and he had a dry cough (which lasted for months).

The fever, the white blood cells, runny nose and dry cough were all chalked up to the surgery. His body was healing from the open heart and the stomach surgery he had previously in May. We were told the runny nose and cough were from the NG tube and the ventilator tube. It probably irritated them and it would take time to heal, it was normal. The white blood cells were up because his body was fighting against the LVAD and it’s normal. The loss of taste could be from the meds, the stomach surgery or the from all the vomiting of bile he had been doing for months. Joe dealt with it and hoped it would get better.

In February of 2020 he still could not taste anything, he still had a dry cough and runny nose. He was still vomiting bile. He didn’t not have a fever at this point and they did blood tests every week. No one could figure out what was going on. He then had several tests. They did a CT Scan of his chest and abdomen, they did a gastric emptying study, they did x-rays and finally decided that they would take a risk and do an endoscopy procedure and go in internally and look around. This test could cause him to hemorrhage, but we decided to do it anyway because at this point Joe was tired of feeling so sick.

After all this testing and the risky procedure, NOTHING. They found nothing. Now in March it’s all over the news about this COVID-19 virus that has all the symptoms that Joe had. Yes, he had everything they are saying this COVID-19 has. He took no antibiotic, he was not hospitalized, we visited many people and celebrated Christmas with our family. I live with him and I have no symptoms our immediately family never had any symptoms. We are still not sure to this day if he ever really had this Covid-19, but as we sit here and watch all the info on what they dish out, he swears he HAD it.

We both have been around people who were sick recently. We went to a funeral with a very large crowd of people and yes there were people there that were sick. There were tears, people blowing their noses, people coughing, people hugging and kissing each other and weeks later we are still fine. Not sure why this virus attacks some and not others. Not sure why some live and some die. I’m not sure about anything at this point in our lives. I find it hard to trust the medical field because of all that my husband has been through.

The media and social media have created a fear in everyone about this virus and it’s so sad to ME, I stayed at the hospital the entire time with my husband. I was there when a lot of people were dying from the flu, pneumonia, heart failure, cancer, drug overdoses and God only knows what else. There were a lot of deaths. There were a lot of doctors that had to pronounce time of death while we were there, but those deaths weren’t blasted all over the media, those deaths weren’t as important because they were an everyday occurrence. Those deaths were a part of life.

Death is a part of life. Death is always going to happen. As sad as it is and as harsh as it may seem, you can’t control when it’s your time to go. The world wasn’t shut down when all these deaths occurred, the world wasn’t shut down last year or in prior years when the flu complications took a lot of lives. Every year on the news they report this is going to be the worst year for deaths from the flu and here we are with this so called virus and they are saying the same exact thing, “This is going to be the worst virus ever.” It may be the worst virus ever, but instilling fear into the people is no way to live. Life is too short to live in fear.

Worrying about getting the virus isn’t good for your well being. Wash your hands, take care of yourself, stay positive, be vigilant with your health and LIVE right now, in the moment. You can’t live in FEAR. That would be like sitting around waiting to get cancer, diabetes, heart disease or anything other kind of disease that’s out there. If you know you are sick, go to the doctor, stay home, tackle it head on and be your own advocate for your health. It’s that simple, just LIVE right now. Love life right now, live life day by day because NO ONE knows what tomorrow will bring.

We never saw what was coming our way, we didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, we didn’t ask for any of this, but here we are with all that was given to us and now we can only live day by day. We don’t live in FEAR, we live in each moment and we try to enjoy each moment. It’s all we have and it’s all we need right now. Just thank God each day and wake up knowing you have another day to live. I love you all. Enjoy your life while you can. Live with no FEAR.