Covid: Our feelings about this time of sadness and loneliness are going to come pouring out eventually – Laura Waddell

One moment I was lifting a supermarket delivery from the doorway, my mind half on other things – the email I’d been about to respond to, the cold air that rushed across my toes as I’d opened the door – and the next all I could think about was the sudden clang of pain in my lower back.

A back injury can begin to grate if it continues for long (Picture: PA Photo/iStock)

I clutched a few tins and a six-pint carton of milk while I waved the driver away, embarassed about not being able to stand up straight. But they’ve probably seen it all before.

So this is what a slipped disc is like. And this is my mid-thirties, when I need to start taking care of my bones and muscles with greater intent, to do what I can to ward off the inevitable aches and pains of the coming decades.

If 2020 has taught me anything, other than a weary perseverance, it’s how quickly things can change: health, circumstances, the rug whipped out from under our feet. The least I can do is start lifting from the knees, rather than the back.

A spoonful of sugar

Perversely enough, the first few days were my best tempered. Having a really good excuse for self-pity and having a stock of strong painkillers is a potent and enjoyable mix. I have always loved a sense of occasion, whether it’s the Superbowl (I don’t ordinarily follow American football), a freak weather event, or a broken limb.

I half remember a theory that temporary injury can be soothing in a way, because it’s an excuse to properly look after ourselves and slow down. If fortunate, it’s regression to being pampered by others, like days off school sick could mean cartoons and being fussed over. Soup and TV and special attention. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, after all.

But although rolling from one side to the other felt like outsized effort, and I had to take getting out of chairs inch by aching inch when my back locked up a few times a day, it wasn’t so bad when I got into a comfortable enough position.

I worked away, propped up on pillows, getting up occasionally to potter about a bit as the advice suggests. I did my full-time day job, delivered a lecture that would have been an even greater pain to reschedule, chaired a festival event I’d been looking forward to, and appeared on TV to talk about the day’s news stories, all while doped up on a cocktail of codeine and diazepam. It was all more or less ok, if not my sharpest performance, and a little glassy-eyed.

Couldn’t the disc have waited a week until my diary was a bit clearer before it slipped? Everything always seems to come at once.

A big grouch with an arm like Popeye

I was also inspired to streamline my daily routine. My preference is for two cups of coffee, one after the other, as soon as I wake up. So at three am one night, struggling to sleep, I ordered a double-sized mug to reduce trips to the kitchen.

An Oscar the Grouch emblazoned vessel bearing the words “I’m a big grouch” has come into my life. It is heavy. Lifting it to my mouth repeatedly is doing wonders for my upper right arm, if nothing for the rest of my body. Soon I will look like Popeye, with his one spinach-squeezing bulging bicep.

But now it’s been over a week, the novelty has waned, and with it, the good humour. I am indeed becoming a grouch. The mobility issues have eased up, but the stronger painkillers have run out. I’ve hobbled to the shops and back without seizing up, which is progress, but the constant, lingering pain is beginning to grate on all of my nerves.

Spending more time in bed has done little good for my mental health, and I can feel anxiety rising the longer I feel compromised in my ability to get on with my days. I have cried and taken to heart things I’d ordinarily brush off. I feel bored of everything, like a petulant child. I am tired. I am grumpy. But I also recognise that in many ways, I am lucky.

Small things can upset us most

This injury, while a total pain in the… back, is temporary. It has gotten me down, but I know it won’t last forever. Throughout this horrorshow of a year, there have been very many people left to fend for themselves alone, without the help of a partner or family to ease them through the tough times, both the overarching strain of living through a pandemic, and the everyday stresses and low points everyone faces.

There are many with long-term health concerns and of vulnerable status whose contact with the outside world has been cut off, and who depended on the bolstering of regular communication.

The importance of support networks to resilience and quality of life can’t be underestimated, and in the scramble to fight the immediate risks of the virus, I don’t think we’ve done enough to help those who fall through the gaps of organised care and community initiatives, the people most at risk of loneliness in any non-pandemic year, but especially now.

When I’ve vented to friends about my bad back, making a joke of it, I sense the catharsis is really soothing my bigger anxieties. Sometimes it’s the small things that upset us most, because where to even begin with the big things?

Sometimes it’s easier to laugh or weep over a broken cup than it is to react to the daily Covid death figures, which in single figures were shocking, and are now buffered by the understanding we’re in this for the long haul.

But at some point, we’re going to need to deal with widespread loneliness and sadness. The mourning that hasn’t had a proper outlet, what with limited funerals and lack of coming together. The celebrations, not properly experienced. At some point, the feelings of 2021 are going to come out.

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