Kim Payne, Practice Manager at Cotswold Dental Wellness, shares her thoughts on coping with the pandemic.
As we rewind our minds back to end of March 2020 we can be forgiven for having thought the worst – thanks to lost freedom and fear-inducing headlines. When the pandemic hit, the uncertainty was overwhelming. As a business, being told to close immediately is frightening, disappointing and disconcerting. As a business providing healthcare it threw a whole different dynamic into the spin. How would we help those that needed us? How would we help those with dental emergencies? Where there is a will, there is a way as they say. We remained on-call to provide advice and guidance and we delivered medication to those that needed it most.
I often think that if we knew there was a time limit on lockdown we might not have felt so frightened. Not knowing when it was going to end was, of course, scary. Like majority of the public, we became obsessed with the statistics, Boris’s announcements and media coverage. Until, that is, we began to focus on what was in front of us. We suddenly all had the luxury of TIME. Time to be with our family at home, time to talk to friends, time to be outside in the garden, time to bake and of course…time to read!
Rather than read the press coverage we started to read to escape this crazy world. Being transported into a good book is a great way of seeking solace. It might only be temporary but its effects can have a permanent positivity on one’s mental health. When I think back to the summer of 2020 I now remember the never-ending sunshine, and sitting outside with a book and a G&T, listening to the laughter and birdsong in nearby gardens.
As for this spring - I'll be diving into Adam Kay's new book Kay's Marvellous Medicine. Cotswold Dental Wellness is delighted to be sponsoring Adam's talk at the festival; it promises to be full of fascinating facts and much entertainment. Although Adam’s background is medical his writing style appeals to a much wider audience than those is the medical world. His children’s books have been a real pleasure to read alongside my nine-year-old son.
