A story of Recovery from Coronavirus and the Integrative Health Convention

I am sure you have been wondering what happened to IHC that was due in 2019 when the pandemic hit us.

As GPs, Naveed and myself were thrust into the deep end as you would expect. I work in a semi-rural practice and have a strong relationship with the community, having been a GP here for over 10 years working full-time. I feel that the surgery plays an integral role in the community. Our practice waiting room is often the place where old friends catch up and a very social place for so many where rich or poor, old or young, all have a chance to connect. On the sudden realisation when the pandemic was at our door, we decided to do what the Government was yet to do, and encouraged our community to have meetings – with local volunteer organisations, voluntary organisations from the community, pharmacies, and large local employers like care homes and the local Castle with a plan to lockdown and for care of the elderly and vulnerable. They all engaged, and it was really a wonderful feeling – a feeling of fear but of hope that we could as a community stave off this impending threat.

For me, Devon escaped the first wave (mostly), but unfortunately in late December, early January, succumbed to the large next wave that hit us. By this time, our practice had volunteered to host the vaccination effort for our local Primary Care Network (over 50 000 patients). It was hard work, but it needed to be done and we were a Phase 1 practice – a practice who saw the necessity to do what needed to be done, but was naive enough to think it would be easy! Despite that, we did the vaccinations in mid December to grateful elderly patients, a few who cried and cried, as it was the first time they were out of their homes in 8 months. It was amazing!

However, it would prove the wrong approach as many of us (healthcare workers) started to fall ill with Covid and care homes were affected with staggering deaths – a lesson to learn for future vaccinations.  I succumbed to Covid myself and it was 3 weeks off work, with a gradual recovery after. I empathise with all of you who had the same experience, and those of you who might still be going through it. In future, I may discuss more of this with all of you but all I can say is in part, I understand what all of you may have gone through.

The lack of secondary care services led to local heroes in our community, mainly the skilled complementary physical therapy workers who would still see people face-to-face when our physiotherapy services were completely closed. The feedback from the physiotherapy services was that they thought they were doing a great job, when really, they had no idea how much suffering was in the community. I am glad though, that many people have discovered, through necessity, the benefits of a different form of health and healing. 

Lessons learned?

The Coronavirus pandemic, at first I thought would bring some benefits, but I find there are few. A loss of connection, fear, and anxiety, and the proliferation of fake news are some of the negative aspects it has brought. I am hopeful though, that the world will recover. However, I see some lessons to be learned and some positivity because of these lessons that we can look forward to.

1. We need to look after ourselves and our bodies, to avoid death and disease, now more so than ever.
2. We need to recover self-care techniques that we can do at home and teach others simply, and easily that are effective
3. Our communities are a source of support and heroism – we need to nurture them and our relationships with them
4. We need to live in the present, and learn to enjoy every moment of our lives and cherish being alive – we never know what might happen next and how it may be prematurely taken from us.
5. We need to learn to recover slowly, pace ourselves, and learn forgiveness and compassion for ourselves in any recovery from an illness, but yet be able to learn lessons from the illness by listening to our minds and bodies.

I am sure there are positive points from the pandemic scientifically, like the proof of concept of mRNA vaccines, and the development and approval process for vaccines. I know many people have strong views about vaccines, but vaccines are the epitome of how we can use our own immune system to innoculate ourselves and heal ourselves. After all, what can a little injection do without its effects on our immune system – which does all the work in the end? 

Workload

There is hope, and I write this as I feel that we are finally on the winning side, or at least I might feel like that after all the overwhelming work of the recent few months. Our practice has returned to many face to face appointments, and I struggle to explain to my neighbouring practices that this has actually reduced our workload by a third every day of the week. It seems, just the ability to see someone face-to-face, and communicate with them as a person, and be available, not just at the end of a phone or video, keeps my patient population happy… That’s a thought for all you GPs out there and for all the rest of you to share with your GPs.

I know it’s a long article, but if you’ve read so far, you might be interested to know that Naveed and I would like to focus on an online programme for IHC 2022 on Friday the 11th of February 2022 together with the Complementary Therapy Awards, running a joint one-day event so that we can learn from the above lessons, and so we can share all these with you. We feel more strongly than ever that Integrative Health – Complementary Therapy, Conventional Medicine, and Self-Care approaches will be the way forward in health and healing and continue to stay committed to connecting doctors and complementary therapists with this approach and encouraging the public to this approach.

I would like to invite your ideas or suggestions or volunteering to speak for 45 minutes at our conference. We will forward your emails to our team at Chamberlain Dunn who are organising this event. Please reply by Monday the 2nd of August 2021.