My Menopause Symptoms Turned Out To Be Covid

Photo by Kristine Wook on Unsplash

For five years, since the start of the pandemic, my husband and I have been avoiding everyone. We visited his mum, but would always do covid tests, primarily because we wanted to avoid the bug ourselves and we knew she wasn’t being careful.

Recently, we started to run out of tests, so we decided to stop routine testing and save them for when we (or she) had symptoms.

Then she had a fall. The fall was bad. She was rushed to hospital where they confirmed she had a broken hip. She’s 101, so any operation is risky. She was rushed into surgery and got a replacement hip. She survived the operation.

We hoped she’d be out of hospital within a few weeks and we could visit her back at home, but it’s complicated when you’re 101. She couldn’t walk, couldn’t go to the toilet, couldn’t do anything for herself. She was feeling bad and we heard a rumour that there was a risk she might die.

Pressure mounted for us to go into the hospital, despite having been isolating for the past 5 years. We bowed to pressure and went to see her in hospital. It was impossible to social distance. There were staff everywhere. Wherever I stood, I felt in the way. It was very uncomfortable, but we felt like it was the right thing to do. Especially when this happened…