MS: The Impact of Lockdown
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| Copyright: C King |
My language was deliberate: I didn't say that we would come out unscathed. It was a 'welcome to my world', balanced with a 'change is hard, but we'll get through it.' And we are. Our resourceful mindset and our varied skillset have been hugely beneficial at this very strange time, but we have now had to balance the extra challenges on top of what we already endure with MS. It's just that for the rest of the world, they've had a lot of catching up to do.
The additional challenges of lockdown impacted us in a more direct way than perhaps those without a chronic condition: cooking for our families who now occupied our homes all day every day, meticulously disinfecting everything coming into the house, eagerly awaiting supermarket deliveries yet dealing with the sudden dearth of available products and essentials. We have learned and embraced new technologies in order to continue to work, while the world went overboard in communication, fearful for its mental wellbeing. Our long-awaited medical appointments have been downgraded to phone calls, or are postponed to 2021. We've been put on wait lists for non urgent hospital procedures, with no idea of whether we are number 1 or 8000 on the list. For those shielding, we have had to be creative in finding ways to exercise and in protecting the mental and physical health of our shielding families. We have lost jobs, careers and money (disabled employees are more likely to have been laid off than those non disabled). We've had to readjust our lives in order to prioritise things that are now our responsibility. We have had to get used to missing a wider variety of hugs. And, we too have missed taking things for granted.
Probably the biggest impact, however, has been to parents with MS, particularly those of young children. Home-schooling, in addition to a plethora of conflicting daily energy requirements, has had a detrimental effect on MSers. No longer can we pace our day. Any time for ourselves has been commuted to an hour a day if we are lucky (this post alone has taken six days to write).
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| Copyright: C King |
A combination of these things and more are leaving most people tired. To MSers, it has been a lesson in endurance but, mostly, it has been exhausting.
As I prefer balance to my posts, I also want to focus on the things I have been privileged to witness as a result of lockdown. Recognising these, reminds me of the small, but significant, things I should be grateful for.
1. There is no doubt that I am closer than ever to my child. We have a renewed appreciation of each other with less hubbub to distract us. I will continue to cultivate his confidence and humour, and harness the things that work for us, like cooking and baking together, or talking honestly about the world and listening to his opinion of it.
2. I have more of a handle on what my child studies, rather than relying on the fleeting moments of homework, or reading titles on a curriculum. I can now see where he has gaps in knowledge, and what we might be able to do about it, and my eyes have really been opened to his observational strengths.
3. I see how my son approaches his work and how this might be impacted by a large class, and a busy teacher. I now know what to evidence and address with his teacher in the new academic year.
4. As with most children of his age, my son has had a lot of questions about current affairs, and we talk about these or any anxious feelings he might have. He is one of the most resilient people I know, but that is only fostered through honest, age-appropriate discussion. I enjoy seeking his opinion and he is of the age where he is only very willing to give it!
5. I hadn't realised how creative I could be in my cooking and baking, but ingredient shortages have made me more resourceful. I'm no chef, but I've tried things I wouldn't normally, and I aim to continue this post lockdown.
6. COVID19 taught us to how to wash our hands. Isn't it odd that it took a virus of this magnitude to equate poor hygiene with ill health? It also reminded us more starkly that isolation breeds loneliness and disconnect and that this, in turn, can affect our mental health.
7. For a few weeks, we breathed cleaner air, and the quiet stillness was wonderful! No planes, no polluting road use. Nature thrived, and my garden sounded like a zoo. I continue to absorb the quiet moments.
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| Copyright: C King |
8. Businesses became accessible almost overnight, and new opportunities arose for an inclusive society - plays shown online, musicians performing from their homes, language apps offering services for free.
9. Non-disabled, non-chronically ill people had a taste of the practical aspects of living with these conditions, sociologically, psychologically and financially...and they didn't like it. Capitalising on this, we must remind people how they felt, and nurture change (look out for my future blog on this).
10. We concerned ourselves with the future, yes, but we learned to live in the present too. I became more aware of what I needed and talked openly about what this looked like. I found ways to fit in time for myself, reprise mindfulness colouring in, ditched social media in favour of reading, sketching; blogging became weekly instead of daily, yet the words poured out more readily, even if I didn't want to share them aloud.
I'm speaking as if this were all over. I think some truly believe it is. With the beauty of hindsight, history will tell us whether or not governments implemented the right things at the right time, if we all of us kept the Virus at bay because we employed more hygienic methods, if lockdown was imposed too late or eased too soon, if we reprised the old 'normal' or integrated the new.
But hindsight seems a little too far in the future for comfort. So our two challenges now are to judge how quickly we will individually come out of shielding and, as far as possible, retain the things we have really enjoyed and want to continue to cherish, whilst moving forward little by little.
