This is a new poem that I wrote after all the events and fallout of Covid had taken its toll one day last week. I realized that I had an opportunity to speak for every person who battles chronic illnesses and/or disability. The words flowed out into a raw, emotional poem. I put it all into this very raw, and emotional poem.
The chronically ill and the disabled are marginalized in society. Covid has made access to basic healthcare impossible. Referrals to specialists are on hold indefinitely, meaning that access to diagnostic procedures like MRIs, CT scans, and ultrasounds are closed. People are not being diagnosed and I fear many, once they are diagnosed, will have no options open to them except for palliative care.
That isn’t the only threat, other treatments are also on hold or severely cut back to meet the Covid restrictions. People are going without cancer treatments, organ transplants, and many are dying. Those statistics are being suppressed along with the number of suicides since the restrictions were put into place.
The circumstances I am dealing with are described within the poem. I am Canadian and our healthcare system is crumbling. Covid is already speeding that process up and I wonder what will happen to those of us who have been brushed aside without a thought?
Fear
unleashed microscopic menace
from virus to pandemic
media spins its dire warning
while leaders put the world in
Lockdown.
Heather Hancock - Author, Editor, Ghostwriter 