What was your life like this time three years ago?

[PrunellaDeVil]

Name changed for this but I’ve been here a long time.

I was getting ready to take the kids back to school this morning and it made me think about how different our lives were before the pandemic.

Then: kids were in wraparound care daily, DH and I drove or took the train to the office early every day, regularly travelled at weekends to see friends who lived an hour or so away, and took holidays abroad. You’d go into work with a cough or cold without thinking. Socialising after work was a regular thing…I miss nights out in London but not the childcare nightmare it caused.

Now: we both work from home most of the time, we walk the kids to school in the mornings. We spend a lot more time with friends who are local. The kids much prefer being at home when they can. Foreign holidays are rarer due to the hassle/cost/availability. People seem much more cautious to stay at home when ill, and our elderly relatives are still very worried about socialising with anyone who is around germs or young children (pretty much the same thing). We have friends who lost loved ones and aren’t over the trauma three years on.

How have your lives changed since pandemic?

In December 2019 we decided that a brand new decade would be a great time to get married. Fast forward and our May wedding was cancelled and DDog was ill them was PTS. I had no self employed support from Govt which was another stress. The flip side was a fabulous summer, lovely walks:/picnics and a great bunch of friends for Friday evening Zoom calls.

We finally married October 2020, four days before another lockdown, with 15 guests in masks (it was still such a special day though). I'm not sure the measures the Govt took were the right ones and I am still very resentful about being excluded from any Govt support but I am very aware that many people experienced far worse and some lost close family so from that point of view we were very lucky.

I kept a diary too have not reviewed it since though
used the free apps we got given eg Calm and Headspace
Yes The first PPE was out of date and rubbish to use.
Feel broken as in eroded by the cumulative stress of it all. I suppose. It is one of those things we all know when we train that something might happen.(you don’t know what the something will be) . At uni you speculative and do the what ifs. But Christ no one could have foreeen covid.

I keep on keeping on, it’s what I trained for, it’s all I’ve ever known. However , it feels really broken and gruelling at the moment

I'd just had the Christmas from hell. Heck the few years from hell. I'd never cried so much or hurt so hard. Not long after this, I told my husband we should have some time apart. We did the whole marriage counselling stuff. Which wasn't working. By March I was ready to leave. Then covid hit and I was stuck. Then ensued a hwllish couple if months until I fled with my daughter to my sisters. My marriage was over, and unbeknownst to me, pandemic hell had only just begun. The last 3 years have been very hard.

But 3 years on I have my own home, I've built a lovely little life with my daughter.

I just recall my stupidity this time 3 years ago. I just couldn't fathom the pandemic. The news so often seems hyped and I presumed this was scaremongering. Watching colleagues using hand sanitiser all the time left me thinking how crazy things were looking. So this time 3 years ago I was an idiot, and that state of utter befudlement continued until the lockdown and then my mum, with several risk indicators, caught it within weeks of the lockdown and I was finally knowledgeable enough to be scared. She had a good recovery ❤. And I learned a valuable piece of insight, that I can be prone to some very blinkered thinking.

Three years ago. We were happy DH and I (he wasn't my husband), we had two baby boys in the house who we were fostering and life was good.

Today. Those two baby boys have happy new lives with loving families, there has been another baby in the interim who has also moved on and DH is gone. I am fostering a new little one on my own.

2 stone lighter and enjoyed my job. Now I loathe it (public sector). Just want to leaves

What I'd give to go back three years....
I had a part time job that I loved, enough to keep my brain ticking over and a small amount of money coming in for frivolous spends.
DH was in a extremely well paid job. We lived in a beautiful house on the coast.
Now, living in a small apartment due to DH no longer working after being diagnosed with the big C just over two years ago. I'm caring for him. He's about to start a treatment which only has a 40-50% success rate. Have never been so scared and stressed.
Remembering that first lockdown as one of my happier times actually.
Honestly my life couldn't be much more different.

I feel really sad about the last three years. My dd had just started reception. My eldest was about to do his gcses. Both of their MH has been fucked. Dd turned into a school refuser and was then diagnosed with ASD which I'm certain wouldn't have have happened until she was a teen ( that's what her paed said at age 3, it's not a problem until its a problem).

My eldest missed so much. He has got mh problems that again I think was exacerbated by covid.

But both are OK I guess. Still it makes me so sad

youngest child was still at school, my business was having its most successful year to date- not big bucks by most people’s standards, but I could afford to pay all of my bills, go on holiday and eat out / have takeaways every now and again as a treat.

Now the house is oh so quiet with youngest at uni, eldest living at the other end of the country and it’s just me at home. Business took a massive hit with covid and I lost over half of my customers, the remaining half barely cover my business overheads meaning that it’s hanging in there but only just. Money is extremely tight, I go from floundering and struggling to pay bills and debt repayments, to trying to remain optimistic for the future. It’s hard when the trips and treats are no more.

We were preparing by training anyone that volunteered how to provide very basic care to critically I’ll people admitted with covid.

We wee scoping other departments with a view to doubling or tripling our critical care capacity.

We were FIGHTING daily for enough PPE for 24 hours for all of our staff. There was not enough. There was NOT enough. We were absolutely terrified.

I said goodbye to my family to begin working 50-60 hours a week for the next 12 months.

I effectively checked out of my family and checked into COVID survival mode.

We had to contact the tissue viability team (who had been redeployed to medical wards) to advise us on our open sores on our faces from the masks we wore for 12/13/14 hours a day.

We were learning how to communicate with patients relatives via I pads.
The most utterly utterly traumatic event to me was witnessing family members saying goodbye to their loved one on screen as they died without being able to be with them.
My gloved hand in theirs as they died with their wife/husband/daughter/son/mother/father on the screen. Horrific, fucking horrific.

Life was turned on it’s head.
I have now left the NHS, couldn’t go on truthfully.
Life couldn’t be better now.

3 years ago today I moved into my new home with my family after being cooped up in a 2 bed flat for years. It was the best timing with lockdown as we all had access to a garden of our own. I was so, so grateful for that.

Was a FT primary school Inclusion and safeguarding lead. Then during Covid was in school with key worker children and vulnerable children. A lot of safeguarding issues came up with so many children at home, then there was all the pressure on children and staff when we returned to catch-up. I left and now WFH in an advisory role, a role that didn't exist before the pandemic

Had just had my 12 week pregnancy scan. Kept the faith with this one, but still couldn’t believe it... Now I’m 46, with a two year old DS & it’s been just brilliant.

It would have been a totally different experience without Covid. The birth, the maternity leave, the bubble of just our little family. Not doing all of the “mum” things.

Worked out great for us, luckily. I didn’t have any MH issues, though it was tough in the beginning. Having my mum in our circle really helped. Me & DS are super-close now.

3 years ago I had newborn. I was wrestling with postnatal anxiety and depression. Things were not good. But my health visitor was lining up help for me. Help that vanished in lockdown. Financially we were ok, enough to have some dinners out and trips out. Then DH was furloughed, then let go. He was in an industry that was badly impacted through covid. We're back on our feet now but the debt is still there...

Life has changed very little for us. Back to normal / pre covid I think. At work, work at home 1 or occasionally 2 days a week. Night time home mostly. Happily. take ds2 to football practice, see my female friends, see local friends occasionally. Dorset for caravan, 1 week abroad. Same as pre covid.

I appreciate that for some it's changed a lot, but for nearly all my friends it's changed little, and is back to almost normal.

I was just coming towards the end of chemo for breast cancer and looking forward to getting well and getting my life back after a horrendous year.
2020 wasn't quite what I'd hoped for.

@LadyDanburysHat I changed jobs in 2020 and I still miss my colleagues like crazy, almost like a form of grief. I do keep in touch and meet up with them a few times a year but it is not the same as the daily chats, coffee breaks and walks into town together we used to have. It was an all male team apart from me and they were quite argumentative with each other and there was lots of drama but they were all the most lovely and interesting people. My new colleagues are nice but I have no hair raising tales to tell my family at the dinner table now and I don't have that deep connection I had with former colleagues. I was only at the old job about 5 years but it was intense in a good way.

3 years ago DD was doing her 1st yr exams at Olympia in London with lots of foreign students - 1 week later she came down with a virus unlike she'd had in years and years that made her very breathless and she was using ventolin like she's not used it in the past 10. DS 1 was very poorly with what turned out to be very severe ulcerative colitis that saw us need to shield for the whole pandemic. DH was still commuting into London and my consultant doctor friend told me "not to under estimate" the virus being talked about in China. Oh and we still thought we'd be emigrating to NZ in the June 😂😂 The pandemic and Ds's colitis put an end to that and we are still in the UK 3 yrs. I've also developed a heart problem that started 2 weeks after I had Covid last year.

Old life:
i was still working, had a life.

New life since covid/getting covid
No life, I’m housebound, unable to work and intend unable to move from my lying down position.

3years ago...
I worked in a different job (gave up when ds had to shield)
I lived in a different house
I had just seen my sister (who I haven't seen since as she lives abroad)
I hadn't started feeling unwell (... eventually leading to hospital stays and a hysterectomy)
My mum and dad were still alive.

Gosh. That’s made me think. DD was 6 months old and I had had a really rough first half of maternity leave with a 2 month hospital stay at the end. Was finally discharged in January 2020, was absolutely delighted and determined to make up for lost time by spending the final half of my maternity leave going to baby groups and showing DD off to anyone and everyone 😢 it all felt so unfair. I think I had 3 weeks of normality before the virus meant things slowly started closing. And then I was plunged into lockdown in a gardenless flat on a main road with a restless older baby. I was back to work by the end of summer.

For ages I said it doesn’t matter, we’re ok and that’s the main thing… but it did matter. That 1 precious year was the only time I had with DD before back to work/nursery/school. And I feel completely cheated out of it and quite angry.

January 2020 I was in the process of looking for a new job after joining a job and realising it wasn’t for me. Was successful in the job I applied for! Desperately broody for a baby, but scared I wouldn’t be able to conceive because of endometriosis. My dad was unwell due to several heart attacks between January and March but he survived.

Now, I have a better paid job from the one I applied for. I have a 6 month old baby girl. We’re extending our home and have a holiday booked in June. The only thing is, my dad passed away last year. Hope he’s proud of me x

I had just handed in my notice to work due to stress and bullying - I also got signed off sick by the GP as a result, and was on all sorts of medication for insomnia, depression and anxiety.

Now I'm running my own business and turning customers away as I just have no space for them. My MH has improved tenfold and I'm no longer on any medication. Things are a million times better now.

Then

Worked in an office. DH wfh.
Kids in primary school going to after school club

Now

New job. Massively better paid. Wfh but with lots of travel including overseas. DH still wfh but also in new better paid job.

One child at high school and one still at primary. Don't bother with wraparound childcare anymore.

Loathed the pandemic but it's hugely improved our quality of life.

Not that much has changed here.
Working in the same jobs.
Kids grown up, still supporting them quietly from the sidelines.
We didn't have regular holidays, weekends away, nights out, big social lives. We always lived quietly and squirrelled money away for a rainy day. The cost of living crisis has been happening here for years.

We're doing fine.