Day 7 - Crash
2020 March 24
Tuesday
7:29pm:
When you’re involved in a crisis — an emergency — there’s a moment when the adrenaline kicks in and you feel like your body is supercharged and can run on nothing except the need to think about the very next step in managing what is happening around you.
It’s a safety mechanism that our bodies have, I think, that helps us to protect ourselves and the people around us in situations that might otherwise feel out of control. For me, it is like time slows down and my brain starts to map what I am doing and what I could be doing and what I might have to do like a flow chart, bumping me along to the next step as things unfold. Sometimes when I’m deep in this mindset, I forget to eat or drink, and sleeping is next to impossible. It feels like the blood in my veins is vibrating. Sounds are clearer and sharper, colours are brighter, physical contact makes me feel “touched out”.
I feel weightless.
Since becoming a parent, these moments happen more often — someone gets hurt, someone is sick, someone needs a parent advocate for medical issues — the list is endless really, but for the most part those incidents are blips. After a day or two they are resolved and things settle back to normal.
And that’s when I crash.
The minute my brain knows it can turn off “disaster management mode”, my body stops — I get deeply tired, I feel sluggish and heavy, I often feel incredibly sad, and my hands and feet are ice cold.
I get a headache. I get night sweats.
I think I’ve been stuck in crisis mode for the past few weeks, waiting for my husband to shift to working from home and for us to have everything we need to go into isolation and shelter in place for at least three weeks. Today, the final errands were completed and he is now working from home going forward, and I’m crashing.
I’m so very tired.
These next few weeks are going to be strange. None of us really know what will happen, but all of us are collectively hoping for the best case scenario — though the “best case scenario” seems to be a moving target, an ever-changing pile of medical knowledge, graphs, statistics, and projections. Many of us are tuning in daily to listen to our Prime Minister speak to the nation, and then to our local and provincial officials for the news specific to us.
There is an odd unity and togetherness in deliberately keeping ourselves so far apart.
I worry about my parents, who live in another province and are in an age-related risk group. I worry about my friends who are healthcare workers, essential retail workers, or in other front line capacities. I want to be able to help them, but know that the very best way I can help them is to stay home.