The Mental Game of COVID-19

(May 1, 2020) 

I will admit that I am a little extreme in my thoughts about staying healthy and battling illness.  I firmly believe that your “mind” is the most essential antidote to illness.  I had an eccentric uncle who believed in this and at a young age of twelve or thirteen, I tried it and whenever I started to feel sick, I would think positive and healthy thoughts and recovery was only a day away.  That was until COVID-19.

I attacked my COVID-19 infection like any other illness.  I would stay positive, rest a bit, but not completely give in or feel sorry for myself.  Then in a few days while I will not be completely healed I know I will be quickly back on the road to being healthy again.  I was relying on past experience to battle my current illness.  That was my first mistake.

COVID-19 likes to linger (At least in my case) and for over a week, while I did not get worse I did not get better either.  The fever and the cough persisted. 

My second mistake and one that caught me even more off guard was that the mental aspect of dealing with COVID-19 was much tougher than I had anticipated.  As I stated earlier I believe a positive and healthy mindset is vital to a recovery.  Yet during my battle with COVID-19 I found it much harder than usual to maintain that positive mindset.  Why?

First the isolation.  Even before I was ill the whole family was in quarantine and since my wife had shown signs early on of COVID-19 we had begun isolating ourselves from each other so our meals were not something we shared, neither was watching TV, or even long conversations.

After I was infected the isolation became even firmer I was regulated to one room.  It is hard to stay upbeat when you are staring at the same things 24/7.  We have a nice plant in our family room that I grew to hate, because it reminded me of my captivity.

I continued to work from home which did several positive things.  First, it made me move to the other end of the room.  This changed my view so I did not have to stare at that plant again.  It also forced me to sit up straight, which was good for my lungs.  It also made the day go faster.   Though, that first week I did not have the energy to work all day.  I remember one time I decided to rest about 15 minutes before a Webex meeting and before I knew it, I was asleep and missed the first 15 minutes of the meeting.  Working however distracted me from being sick for the most part and it forced me to think of the future positively.

Despite those positives, I was not energized by work because I was missing the interaction with other people which is a large part of my work and the part I enjoy the most.

Even my meals had become boring.  It is not that they tasted bad or anything, my wife and son did cook some great meals.  It was just that I was eating alone on a tray table.  It was like eating in a hospital.  The meals were dropped off and picked up and I ate because I was hungry and needed sustenance.  I was not however dining having conversation while I ate.   There is a huge difference between eating and dining.

I tried to go outside but there was really only one really nice day.  Most of the days were cold and damp.  I would walk around the yard but the cold really hit me.  Normally I love the cold but with COVID-19 I really felt the cold and did not stay outside long.

Finally having COVID-19 somehow made me feel bad about myself.  There was somehow something wrong with me.  It was like I was the character Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter.  Instead of the letter “A” it was “C-19”.  I don’t have a logical reason I should feel this way except that maybe I knew I was contagious and needed to stay away from people.  Which outside of my trips to the grocery store I had done.

With all these negative feelings swirling around, it was harder to focus on the mental game of beating COVID-19.  I could not imagine being hospitalized with COVID-19 and being surrounded by strangers, obviously caring strangers, but strangers nonetheless.  It would be easy to lose the mental game.

For me to win this mental game I did what I had done in ultramarathons I broke it down to legs and in this case I took it day by day.  Until I realized that after four days the aches were gone then the fatigue.  Each symptom that dropped lifted my spirits.

I also received positive energy from outside the house.  I had decided to go public about the struggles with COVID-19 my wife and I were having, for a couple of reasons I won’t get into here, but it was surprising one of the more positive things I did in helping my health.  The outpouring of support from my friends on Facebook and the people I work for and with was genuine and touched me.  I will admit while I don’t have a large social media presence almost 100% of them are people I have met in person they are not just someone I friended. 

While at the moment, I feel that I am on the road to complete recovery I realized one final lesson in the mind game of health.  Sending positive energy to someone has an impact.  It changes their mindset or at least keeps them positive and while it was an eccentric uncle who first introduced me to the importance of a positive mindset in one’s health.  It was an eclectic group of people of people on Facebook who affirmed it.