By : Shanti Yanuarini
An old woman sitting on her bed with her head down. When I ask her what happened, she said that she missed her family. She told me that she hadn’t sleep lately because she is worried about her family at home. She was a mom with 2 sons. She keep thinking how about her family daily meal because she had left them for more than a week.
That is common sight in Covid-19 isolation room in the hospital. I was one of the patient in the isolation room for 2 heavy weeks. In this case, the word heavy refers not only due to the illness itself but also related with mental situation. Isolation room was a quiet place. The room is filled with 3-4 people with curtain to seperate each other. Room for mobile in the isolation room are finite. The area of isolation are locked and there’s restriction to walk outside the isolation room.
Patient that quarantined in there usually more than 50 years old. The patient don’t have any friend or family that can visited or accompanied them during the treatment. The patient also can’t call the nurse anytime they want because nurses have schedule to visit the patient.
The patient are completely alone. Some patient brought their hand phone, so they can call their families and friends. But for other people, they don’t have that kind of luxury because some old patient can’t use any gadget. So the patient felt lonely because they were far from the environment they knew before.
Lonely feeling itself lead to several action. One of the patient seen as hurting herself by falling her bodies down from the bed and keep asking the nurse to take her home. She also send her request to the nurse so that her family member can take care of her in the isolation room. Other patient have sleep problem because she knew that prior patient in her room was die because of this viruses. Other patient seen daydreaming often because she feels lonely for being apart from her family.
Being lonely in isolation room is hard because the patient are not only lived there in 3-4 days, but sometimes it happened for at least 2 weeks. Aside being apart from family, the patient also get injection to kill the viruses and sometimes the injection are painful for the patient and this experience was not easy for some people. This situation can lead to stress and eventually decrease the immune system of patient.
Holt-Lunstad said ‘being connected to others socially is widely considered a fundamental human need-crucial for both well-being and survival’ . In the other word, isolation will decrease the well-being and survival skill of the patient. Added more with the medication and painful injection. Despite its hard, but they still have to face this situation. The patient need to boost their imune system in order to survive againts Covid-19.
Stress have an effect on digestive system and hypertension that closely related with coronary heart disease and increase in blood cholesterol levels. Stress also suppress immune system and leaving the vulnerable to illness. Stress would lead to frequent illness and infection.
The reason behind the importance of immune system written by Chowdurry et.al. In their journal they mentioned that ‘immune are the best defence because it supports the body’s natural ability to defend against pathogens and resist infection’. Therefore, the patient need to boost their immune system so their body can fight against Covid-19. In addition, they suggested to boost the immune by doing exercise, eat healthy food consist of vitamin and minerals.
Boosting immune system also can be done by taking care of patient mental health. This is closely related with their survival feeling. If the patient have positive mindset and having positive wellbeing, then they are ready to fight the viruses because their body produce a strong immune system to fight the corona viruses. Taking care of someone’s mental health also can be done by maintaining strong relation with God through prayer and meditation. Other activity like having conversation with other patient in order to keep the social relation also can help to reduce the feeling of lonely in the isolation. The conversation will increase the bond between them because the patient have the similarity which are their illness and their feeling of being isolated or far from their family and neighbourhood.
It’s been 10 month since the pandemic first announced in Indonesia but there were no sign when this pandemic will stop. This viruses teach us to re-think what contribution that we give to our community. Therefore, as a responsible citizen, it is important to put safety as the first consideration during our daily activity to stop the viruses to spread. Adding more patient in the isolation room and let them suffer from lonely feeling will make this pandemic longer.
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