Grateful For The Great Re-evaluation

Prioritizing the things that really matter

I kicked off 2021 by contracting COVID-19 at the literal start of the new year. This was when vaccines had not been rolled out yet. At first, it felt really manageable, then it felt like the Flu, then it felt like something else. I’ve never had such intense headaches in my life, I’ve never felt so weak and I’ve never had such high fevers.

As I sat in the ER, I remember feeling a mix of relief and uncertainty when the doctor told me I had Covid-induced pneumonia, but he said it with the caveat that my lungs “looked good” and so I chose to go home with some steroids to manage the inflammation in my lungs.

The worst part of recovery started then, as for weeks I would cough uncontrollably, and violently because that’s what pneumonia does to your body.

But eventually, the coughing stopped. Gradually my strength returned and over the course of a few months, whatever damage the pneumonia had caused, which included a noticeable decline in my lung capacity while being active, seemed to go back to normal levels.

I’m grateful. It could have gone differently. We think of things like COVID-19 in black or white terms. Life or death. But life is always more nuanced. There are millions of people who survived Covid, who are just not the same person they were before they got sick. I had brain fog for exactly two weeks and could tell you almost to the day when it lifted. Some people who contracted Covid still have symptoms like this, or other debilitating complications and life is not the same for them and may never be.

I’m grateful I had a full recovery and was given the opportunity and clarity to take my life in new directions. There’s a lot of talk about “the great resignation” but we rarely talk about the “why” behind it. We should really call it “the great re-evaluation” because, after these last couple of years, so many of us have been able to re-evaluate life—and prioritize the things that truly matter. And I’m grateful for that too.