Me and My Damaged Brain

As dramatic as it is, this is the day part of me literally died. The date will haunt me for the rest of my life and will remain one of the worst days of my life.

The country had been in lockdown for 6 weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I had been lucky so far; my whole household had, and none of us had got the dreaded double lines. Half of us continued to work as we were classed as ‘essential’, given that we worked in a supermarket; the other half were furloughed.

I’d been working at Tesco for 18months on their online shopping team and had the glamorous title of personal shopper. For the most part, I liked my job and was damn well good at it too. When lockdown number 1 hit, so did the shift changes. We no longer started at 6am and 7am, 2am and 4am became the new norm. We had to be in and out of the store as quickly as possible before the queues began outside. This was somewhat manageable until 3 days before my stroke, when my body became more and more exhausted.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday I’d been up at 2:45am, walked down to meet my lift at 3:30am and then we’d be in Tesco picking the shopping by 4am. Sleep was hard to come by the longer the lockdown continued. The sun was setting later every day, the 5 other adults in the household slept during a more ‘normal’ timeframe, and we all became more and more restless with each day that passed shut inside.

I’m sure you all remember the Zoom calls that everyone loved during COVID. Well, the weekend before my stroke, everyone in the house was doing them. We all know they were just a new way to drink with your friends, without actually being with them. My boyfriend at that times brother had one going Friday night, so sleep was few and far between. Then his parents had one with their friends on Saturday night, so again, between the drunken laughter and calls for another drink, sleep would not come. Trust me, I tried earplugs, sleeping teas, white noise and anything the internet recommended. But when you need to go to sleep at 7/8pm on a weekend where people are getting drunk on Zoom, nothing will work.

From getting up on Friday morning to returning from work on Sunday, I slept no more than 7-8 hours. It is safe to say I was exhausted beyond belief. I did try to nap after my shift on Sunday, once I got home at 10am, but my body would not shut off. It was as if it was building towards something; no matter how tired it felt, it just would not give in to the rest I so desperately needed.

By 4:30pm, my (now ex) boyfriend had got home from his shift, which was also at Tesco. After he’d changed, we sat on the sofa downstairs watching TV with his parents. I remember having a moan about how tired I was feeling and how I really hoped I managed to get some rest that night. He then invited me to lean my head onto his shoulder and have a hug. In that simple movement, something shifted: the thunderclap of pain, the lightsaber whooshing noise, vision now blurred.

My stroke had started…