the isolation diaries - week three

As I write this, the UK's Prime Minister is in intensive care with severe symptoms of Covid 19.

On Tuesday, the foreign secretary told the country that he expects Boris Johnson to fully recover as he is "a fighter".

As someone with first-hand experience of being critically ill, I intensely dislike the use of words like fighting or battling an illness, or measures of bravery in doing so.

My reasons for this dislike are simple.  It implies that someone who succumbs to their illness is therefore somehow weak, or didn't fight, or wasn't brave.  And that is patently utter nonsense.

If you personally feel that battling or fighting or being brave is helping or has helped you recover from a life threatening condition then that's fair enough.  But for someone else to apportion those attributes to another person is, for me at least, wrong.

Was I any less brave when I was ill?  Would I have been any less brave had I died?

Of course not.

I never thought I was fighting or battling against cancer.  I never thought I was brave.  I just listened to my doctors, took my medicine and literally hoped for the best.

get well Boris

Now, I realise I may have offended many with this post.  That's not my intention.  People who are seriously ill are just that.  Some survive, many don't.  That doesn't make them a failure or a coward or someone who didn't "fight".

Anyway, there seems to be no end in sight to this current situation, and I hope and pray every day that people won't die.  It is a forlorn hope but at times like this hope is really all we have.  That and the love of our families and friends.

We don't need to be told that if we get ill we have to be brave thank you very much.