There are many situations in life that you have to experience to feel what it means, one of the things that I’m realizing is the fact that our mind over the years remains more or less stable. I mean that the mind undergoes just a few changes that can be minimized with some exercises but the body… that's the problem.
As the years go by, the activities that we can maintain become less, our mind tells us that we can do it but our body comes to a time reminds you that you can’t. He tells you in different ways that he cannot bear to do this activity anymore.
As the years go by, our physical body asks for routine changes, because it begins to establish limits even if our mind does not accept it.
This week has been very hard for my body even though my mind doesn't accept it. I worked for many years giving my 100% in patient care, now I have a very special situation because my brother is very ill with pneumonia and, in addition, his asthma doesn’t allow him to improve as fast as I would like.
He is the only brother that remains for me both alive and here in my country, so I assumed his care as a patient. It has been a very hard week, little by little my body has become dull. I do the same thing every day but at night when I return home I realize that my exhaustion is both physical and mental.
I get to his house in the morning, I leave my house at 10:30 a.m. and start working with him at 11:30 a.m. giving him an injection in his gluteus, then he has to help him with his respiratory physiotherapy and measure his oxygen saturation level, which ranges from 80 to 90 rpm.
At night he had to prepare two antibiotics, a third generation cephalosporin and a broad spectrum quinolone, both intravenously so it was a very important procedure and with all its aseptic and antiseptic maneuvers. There were no problems for this treatment which was completed in two hours.
In addition, he had to comply with the anti-COVID protocol, since here any respiratory pathology is treated as COVID… even if the preliminary results are negative for it.
Every day the same task for 7 days, today is my last day with the administration of the treatment but my body no longer wants to respond to the routine. I can't wake up like before, I went to bed last night at 12 at night and at 10 am I managed to wake up and that never happened to me. I generally wake up at 3am or 5am at the latest on some very extreme occasions at 7am.
I can only think that now I respect more the memory of my mother when she spoke of her past. She went back to that time and lived it in her memory as we all do. I never thought about this detail while she was remembering and narrating it. Now when I recall my times when I was running in an emergency in the hospitals where I worked, I don't know how I could have so much energy to work for 72 hours straight and barely sleep 3 hours during each night shift.
If we could have the experience that we have when we are older and not wait to live it to realize so many things that happen in the body.
My mind plays many tricks on me. Sometimes I think I can still do things that my body can't tolerate anymore and just when I'm doing it I realize I won't be able to. Sometimes my mind thinks that I can climb a tree to take a fruit because when I was young I did it many times. I even climbed a bit and then asked myself during the fact ...what am I doing? How can I get down now? And I think of the kittens we see in rescues, they go up to the top and then they think about how to get down and that's how it happened to me.
And I comment on this because it’s the same thing that happens to me now with direct attention to my brother. I don’t doubt that on another occasion I will help, it was always like that with the illnesses of my family, I always took care of them, my parents, my brothers, my son. But my mind is already on the memory that I always did it but my body was left behind in the process. I no longer have enough physical strength to endure the effort.
Today I am here writing my experience and feeling that my body is exhausted. I hope my brother continues to improve now that the critical phase has passed. He still has severe shortness of breath but is recovering. There are still a few days to receive therapies but he no longer needs intravenous medication, now comes his respiratory physiotherapy and oral treatment.
How is your brother now though? Has he been healthier? And i do think the lack of movement does affect your endurance. Maybe if you can get around more, your body would adjust to it too