COVID-19 Can Take Your Breath Away

Recently, my mom passed away. It has been a profound, and at times, disturbing experience to go through. Our mothers are part of ourselves, and we are a part of our mothers. Regardless of the type of mother you end up having or your relationship with them, you are always connected to them until one of you leaves this world. It will never be any other way.

I was fortunate that my mom did not pass away due to COVID-19. Instead, she passed away from a number of serious diseases that ganged up on her and eventually got the best of her. She was ready to go and wanted to die at that point due to her seemingly endless health-related struggles.

I say that I was fortunate because many people worldwide are losing their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, or children due to this highly contagious virus. They are young, old, or somewhere in-between. No one feels ready for this unusual, random loss of their loved one. My mom was in her late 70’s, and very sick for the past four years. She had no quality of life left and struggled to breathe, even on full oxygen. It was brutal for myself and my father to see her live like that. So, for her sake, we were relieved to see her finally move past that.

No one feels ready for this unusual, random loss of their loved one.

It was due to a progressive worsening of her lung disease that dictated that she depend on high levels of oxygen. Even then, she would sometimes look at me with desperate eyes and tell me that it felt like she was suffocating. There was nothing I could do. She had an amazing G.P. and specialist who did everything they could to help her, to ease her suffering. But even at that, that was her harsh reality during the last year of her life.

I’m sharing this because as I sat there with her over the last year, seeing her struggle to breathe in spite of the right healthcare, the right treatment and the highest levels of oxygen, it struck me how many people around the world are similarly struggling to breathe due to contracting COVID. Seeing the one you love struggling to breathe and feeling like they are being slowly but inexorably suffocated—is not what anyone would want for their loved one or themselves.

…seeing her struggle to breathe in spite of the right healthcare, the right treatment and the highest levels of oxygen, it struck me how many people around the world are similarly struggling to breathe due to contracting COVID.

From the start, I took the coronavirus seriously. It’s a virus. Anybody that has lived to even their teens realizes how the flu is easily shared amongst us. We will all get a flu now and then, regardless of how careful we think we are being, trying to avoid those annual viral flu strains being passed around. Now we have a virus that is shared much more easily. There seem to be a lot of people out there that don’t take this seriously, even though they have caught and suffered through at least one strain of the flu in their lifetime.

As everyone knows, COVID-19 attacks the lungs. At some point in the progression of the illness, most symptomatic individuals will struggle to breathe, whether slightly or much more seriously. As someone that has seen this much too devastatingly up-close, I would ask that you take this virus seriously. You don’t want to be the one that feels like air is inaccessible to you, or to have to watch your loved one feel like they are suffocating.

As someone that has seen this much too devastatingly up-close, I would ask that you take this virus seriously.

Oxygen is life. There is no life without enough of it. And even the best healthcare in the world may not be able to help you win that battle if the virus shows up in your neck-of-the-woods.