My mom just got a positive test. She’s going in to day 5 of symptoms. I have spent the last 9 months panicking about this and now it is like I am watching my worst case scenario unfold before me. She is 64, pretty healthy, no underlying health conditions other than some minor management for high blood pressure. I always figured if I and my husband and kids got covid it would be stressful but fine, statistically with our ages and health it would probably be a nonevent. But my fear all along was my parents would get it even though they have been so careful and isolated this year. And now it’s happening. So far my dad is negative still. I know statistically it’s likely she/they will be fine but living through this is crippling to me.
I have a lot of superstitious anxiety so I find it really hard not to see this all just being the culmination of a hellish year, my mom dying of this or having a horrendous go of it, landing in hospital, severe complications and lingering issues, plaguing her for the rest of her life. I have images of having to tell my young son his grandma has died and he can’t see her anymore. I have images of her alone in the hospital, her funeral, of my dad living alone after this. Every time I talk to her I wonder if it will be the last “normal” conversation I’ll have with her. Will I look back and wish I had known it was my last chance to say I loved her? I just can’t shake it and I’m really struggling with it. I don’t know how to get through this. She is not crippled by the anxiety in an obvious outward way but I know she is really anxious about it herself too and hearing that fear in her voice just unravels me. I know it’s day 5-10 typically where people can take a sudden turn to severe condition and knowing she’s heading into this zone now is almost too much for me to bear. I don’t know how to cope in the next week or so to get through this. When HA is about myself it’s very bad but different than this where I feel completely at a loss and helpless.
Also related to the superstitious anxiety - my mom has always tended to have a harder time with respiratory stuff like getting over colds and coughs and stuff so I think that leaves me with a sense of dread and foreboding like well this is it, there’s no way she’ll get through this. And secondly, I just started virtual therapy a couple months ago with a therapist I really like but whose husband suddenly died in an accident years ago when her kids were young and as a result she’s now certified in grief counseling etc because she feels it’s something she can help others with since she’s been through it herself. Since I first learned that I found myself unable to shake the sense that I was “meant to find her” because then she will be a guide when I suffer some great loss in my life. It’s like I’ve been just waiting for this to happen and now I feel like the covid with my mom is going to be it.