Infected by the Virus - A Personal Account

**Jude Iam** · 03-24-2020 05:55 PM

VIA A FRIEND. Personal angle of what it's like to have Covid 19. Jude

This writing from Kate Woods is so deep and vulnerable and to the point, that I feel called to share.
She is infected by the virus:

"This virus is all about the lungs. I can feel the pressure, like a baby elephant sitting on my chest.
Breathing itself seems to be on the ’to do’ list and the lungs don’t seem to be that fussed about organically filling. It is an effort.

"Whole sentences are off the table now, as the air is needed for more basic things. I communicate with hand raises, nods and few words. I can now feel the glue-like substance at the bottom of my lungs. So this is what she’s made of, hello Ms.Corona: she’s a sticky, thick, unmoving mass which fills pockets up in the lungs that should have air in. Will enough pockets retain enough air, or not? It’s an interesting place in which to sit. The not knowing. I have highly scarred lungs from pneumonia as a baby and a diagnosed asthma, so I’m vulnerable.

"Recording this pandemic somewhere (might as well be here) feels important to me,
to try and make some sense of the landslide that contains our former understanding of life,
as it slips away. To attempt to document the passage of time as these ‘panic-buy-to-ghost-town’ days descend. And to attempt to capture this, a birds eye view, while gasping through the glue that is Corona, feels apt. I’m not sitting on the sidelines or dancing in the kitchen at an isolation party. I can’t. But I can write.

"The deeper medicine which I feel arising through this personal and global experience, seems to be about grief. The lungs have long been associated with grief and Ms.Corona invites, no, demands, us to sit very still indeed (even walking across the room is like scaling a mountain) and try to breathe through the ‘pollution’ deep in the lungs. Like sitting in a forest fire, trying to grab some oxygen. Or a traffic jam.

"Ironically now and only now, the lungs of the world are beginning to fill, as the skies and the roads,
the rivers and the seas clear of our rushing about. Somehow, the tables have entirely turned.
The earth takes a nice deep breath and we’re now flapping about, gasping and flailing, like fish on the shore.

Continues here