My name is Nancy B. a nurse by profession and currently working at a certain clinic in Zambia. For one thing, I enjoy and love my job, I feel that there is no greater satisfaction I can ever get when compared to the joy that I have after working tirelessly to help a patient and at the end of the day leave with a sense of contentment that I did something that helped save a life. No one can take that exorbitant feeling of happiness and satisfaction away from me.

However, my story is no happy ever after or fairy tale. Let me share my story of how a love strong and fortified as concrete was turned was into a fugitive lump of malleable clay.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, something changed: I developed a fear that clenched my soul and had shaken my enjoyment of my work. Negative thoughts danced to my tachycardia heart whenever I heard of rumors of a suspected COVID-19 patient. Worse yet, we were living at that time where some people thought COVID-19 was a hoax and threw to dust the guidelines given. True, my job always means I risk my life but this time I was scared. No one was prepared for the coronavirus and in truth, would we have been prepared if we were told beforehand about a decade ago? We wouldn’t in any circumstance be prepared for it.

I had negative thoughts that hindered my enjoyment of my work. The overt reason was knowing that I might endanger my family because of the timeless hours I spent at the hospital which like a ripple effect made me live in constant fear. In addition, to know that some people were so shallow-minded that they didn’t want to follow simple COVID-19 guidelines made it worse. I had seen colleagues go into quarantine and wondered to myself whether it was really worth it to risk my life while others were not doing anything to fight this disease. This had a major impact on me psychologically.

At the outset of this story, I talked about how my story is no happy ever after: Well I lied!  My joy for my work has been rekindled and I have had a good fight with my negative feelings and I will successfully say I won that fight! Many people helped me throughout that period. I wish to encourage anyone who might be facing the same as I did to talk to friends, family, or anyone really, whenever they have negative feelings. Remember negative feelings are like cancer that spreads and consumes our life if not addressed.

COVID-19 is real therefore, I encourage everyone to follow the guidelines to mask up and prevent the spread of this disease. I appreciate this platform for giving me the chance to share my voice. Thank you.