Nadia Ackerman, As Told To Alexis Jones
Nadia Ackerman, IS A GIFTED ARTIST from New York City better known as “Natchi,”
I’m 45 years old and originally from Australia, but I currently live in Brooklyn, New York,
with my boyfriend. I work as a singer-songwriter, illustrator, and entrepreneur. I also have
my own business called Natchie, where I sell whimsical illustrations of my lyrics, animals,
and more. When I’m not writing or sketching, you can find me working out. I consider myself
a pretty health-conscious individual; I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, ‘I” Am vegan and knows
the importance of living at the cell.
I also exercise five days a week, alternating between hour-long vinyasa yoga and CrossFit sessions.
I’ve even hiked the Himalayan mountains. I’m definitely considered “the healthy one” among my friend group. My lifestyle didn’t protect me from the novel coronavirus like I thought it would, though.
I spent 22 days battling COVID-19 after going to a large dinner party in March—an event I wish I’d never attended, in retrospect. What follows is a diary of the last month. I hope everyone will learn from my experience with novel coronavirus—and take the precautions that I wish I’d started putting into place earlier.
March 10: I attended a benefit dinner where I now suspect I got the virus.
About 100 people had been invited to a thank you dinner by the Australian consulate. (Earlier this year,
I put on a benefit concert with three other friends to raise money in response to the Australian bushfires and donated it to the Red Cross.) Now, I realize that this dinner was probably the worst possible environment to be in. It took place in small restaurant, where we had cocktails in a crowded area, then moved upstairs to dinner where everything was served as shared plates and passed around the table. I thought twice about going to the dinner, but at the time I figured I was overreacting because no one was really taking the virus that seriously yet.
So I went — but I now regret putting myself in that situation.
All nine people at their table that night fell ill within days, and three have taken coronavirus tests
that gave way to positive results. “It felt like someone was punching me on the inside—
like I had been kicked by a horse,” the 45-year-old says of her coughing attacks, ongoing fever, scratchy
sore throat, extreme malaise, and exhaustion. “Then nausea hit me hard on day four.
I have zero appetite, and I lost my sense of taste and then smell. I still don’t have them back.”
The headaches come and go relentlessly, and Ackerman describes them as
“a million times worse than a migraine.”
After several days of battling coronavirus on her own, she made the decision to call for help.
“I spent four days in bed thinking it would pass soon. Everyone was telling me I was young and strong and
I’ll be fine. I wasn’t fine,” she says. “The fifth day, I woke up to take a sip of water that was immediately met by vomiting and diarrhea. I called 911 and an ambulance took me to the emergency room, where I was treated for severe dehydration, nausea, and headache as a result of the coronavirus.”
She wants people to know that even the healthiest 45-year-old person, who does yoga and
leads a vegan lifestyle with no preexisting health condition and educated attitudes about health,
can easily contract and suffer from coronavirus. “The thing about this virus is that
it comes and goes in waves,” she explains. “Stay home. It’s not only about ourselves but
[for] other people, and we should have acted earlier.”
March 12: I started showing symptoms of novel coronavirus.
Thursday morning, I had a really weird coughing attack. It was strange. You know when you cough so hard, it feels like you’re going to vomit? It was that kind of cough—hard & aggressive. It lasted about 10 minutes, and it was enough to make my eyes water. At first, I chalked it up to spring allergies. By 5 p.m., I was hit with a fever of 100 degrees, scratchy throat, and sore chest. It felt like a horse had kicked me in the ribs—or like someone was punching me or had punched me in the lungs. My boyfriend had to take care of me, and I stayed on the couch, alternating between burying myself in blankets and throwing them off of me to deal with my fever.
I lay there all evening, never making it upstairs to my bedroom.
March 13: I woke up the next morning feeling just as bad, if not worse—
so I went to urgent care.
At this point, everyone was talking about COVID-19, and I just knew I had it. This wasn’t a flu.
It felt different. I hadn’t felt this sick in 22 years, since I first moved to New York and caught pneumonia.
I didn’t call ahead or put on a mask and gloves. The only thing I could think was,
“I feel sick. I’m going in.” When I walked into the urgent care clinic, things seemed calm. There were only
3 people in the waiting room at the time, and no one behind the front desk was wearing masks or gloves.
But when I approached the desk and told them that I thought I had novel coronavirus, they put them on straight away and gave me a mask, too. I sat in the waiting room for about 40 minutes before I was let into one of the exam rooms. When the doctor came in to see me, he wasn’t wearing anything protective. I was shocked because I was sitting there thinking, “I know I’ve got it.” He checked my temperature, and it was 100 degrees. He told me that 103 was the benchmark they were using to decide whether or not someone
should be tested for COVID-19.
I had been in contact with someone else who was waiting for her test results, but when I told the doctor that,
he still said that he couldn’t give me a test; he encouraged to come back if my friend’s results ended up being positive. “You’ve probably got it, but I can’t test you,” he said. Honestly, I was really disappointed. I felt like maybe I was overreacting, but at the same time, I knew I was really sick and that I likely had the virus. It was really confusing. I said to the doctor, “Oh, so there are probably tons of people walking around with this right now, infected and positive, but who haven’t been tested?” And he said, “Absolutely.”
After urgent care sent me home without a test, my symptoms evolved.
The cough lingered, but my fever went away—which at first made me think I was getting better. Then came the extreme exhaustion, the kind where you can’t lift your head off the pillow. Next came the headaches. I’m a migraine sufferer, so I can really handle headaches. But I would gladly take a migraine over the headaches I was getting. They were relentless. And nothing worked. Not Tylenol. Nothing touched it. It was almost like my brain was boiling or like someone was like squeezing it inside my head. It was unbearable. I also began experiencing nausea and loss of appetite. And on March 16, my boyfriend became sick. He went down the same way that I did: severe fever; freezing cold, then extremely hot. His fever was up to 102.5. So I got up and rallied. I thought, “I need to take care of him.” I tried to just not think about how sick I was.
March 18-21: I took my boyfriend to the ER, where he was admitted immediately.
Meanwhile, I was at home alone, vomiting and too weak to even shower.
On March 18, I took John to the hospital, where he was admitted and tested positive for COVID-19.
After I dropped him off, I went home alone, got in bed, and stayed there for four days.
I became sicker and sicker and sicker. My biggest problem at this point, though, was that I had no appetite.
Then I lost my sense of taste and smell.
And it wasn’t like a cold, when you lose taste and smell and you’re stuffy. I had no trace of
either of those senses. You could have served me rotten eggs, and I wouldn’t have known the difference.
Then came the diarrhea. At this point, I actually felt like I was going to die.
It felt like there was nothing left of me. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t drink. I couldn’t walk.
I couldn’t shower. I couldn’t even lift my head off of the pillow.
I was too weak. My boyfriend was still in the hospital, so no one was there to help me.
March 22: I went to the hospital and was finally tested for COVID-19.
I was texting my boyfriend about my symptoms, and he mentioned them to his doctor, who suggested,
I call an ambulance right away. When the ambulance arrived at my house, the EMTs would not come inside. They knocked on my door and waited for me to answer. They looked scared and were hesitant to even come near me. They walked me to the ambulance and strapped me into a seat.
I felt a sense of relief knowing I was on my way to get help.
As soon as I went through the doors of the ER, a nurse came running up to me with a mask
and said, “Quick, put this on immediately.” She also gave me a bag for vomiting because I was dry retching
as I came in. Eventually, I was given a bed and taken into a sick bay where patients were separated by curtains.
No one came to see me for about an hour and a half.
The first person I saw was the nurse. She took my temperature and blood pressure and said
I was extremely dehydrated—so she hooked up to an IV for fluids. When the doctor came in,
I told him immediately that my boyfriend had tested positive for novel coronavirus while he was in the hospital. If I hadn’t brought this up, I don’t think they would have tested me because I didn’t have a fever at the time.
But because I had been in direct contact with someone who’d tested positive and had every other symptom on list, the doctor gave me the test. And it was not fun. It’s a swab that goes really high up your nose.
It was painful, uncomfortable, and I had a little bit of a bloody nose afterward. It’s not nice.
After being tested for COVID-19, I was also given a few blood tests and chest x-rays to check
my oxygen and lungs. Twelve hours later, I was released from the hospital and told I would get my test results in a few days. I was instructed to come back if I couldn’t breathe. Otherwise, I was given a printout on self isolation best practices and told I needed to quarantine for two weeks and three days. My boyfriend had been released from the hospital earlier that same day, so I went to home to him and
we continued taking care of each other.
March 24: I posted to Instagram about my COVID-19 journey.
By this point, some of my symptoms had subsided and I didn’t feel completely horrible,
so I decided to tell others about my experience. Strangers from the Australian relief dinner started reaching out to me and saying, “Oh, I was at this table, and I got sick, too,” or “You don’t know me, but I was at that dinner and I tested positive.” Everybody started coming out of the woodwork.
March 27: I got a call from the hospital confirming I’d tested positive for novel coronavirus.
When my phone rang that day, I knew it was the hospital. I picked up immediately, and a nurse told me that
I’d tested positive for COVID-19 and to continue doing what I was already doing—isolating. When she gave me the results, I finally felt validated. Even though I’d known deep down that I had the virus,
it felt good to finally have an answer—even if there was no treatment.
April 2: I finally felt like myself again.
The days leading up to April 2, my nausea went away and I was finally able to start eating again.
I couldn’t fully taste or smell anything yet, but I was hungry. My boyfriend and I started off with the BRAT diet: bread, rice, applesauce, and toast. That’s all we could hold down. But at least we had our appetites back. Finally, I started having the energy to do things like shower or start drawing again. I took a walk outside,
keeping a safe distance from others, and I even began gardening.
On April 7, after my isolation period was over.
I went out for a grocery store run. (Up until then, our neighbors had been leaving food at the door.)
I put my mask and gloves on and walked to the closest market. I was shocked to see so many people in the
store who weren’t distancing themselves and weren’t vigilant about sanitizing their hands. I hope people read my story and take it seriously. I know my family and friends are more cautious than ever, now that they’ve
seen what the virus can do. Anyone can be affected, and you can turn a corner for the worst very quickly.
I should know since it happened to both me and my boyfriend.
GOD GAVE ME STRENGTH
This is About Surviving & Thriving Past Life Experience!!!
Nadia Ackerman Born in Melbourne, Australia to Afrikaan parents and growing up in Allambie Heights. Which is a suburb of northern Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia 17.5 kilometres north-east of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of Northern Beaches Council.
It is part of the Northern beaches region. Allambie is an Aboriginal word that means “peaceful place.
From a very early age her desire to be heard was apparent.
Nadia began singing at the age of three in her crib. She would wake up her parents at 4 a.m. while serenad- ing her parents with √♥ Don’t Cry For Me Argentina √ and The Mull of Kintyre with perfect pitch and a lisp. This wasn’t surprising given her pedigree – her mother, Tess, was a lead soprano opera singer in Cape Town, while her late father Peter had an extraordinary ear for harmony and could play any instrument he turned his hand to. It was her father who first recognized and nurtured Nadia’s his 3rd child of 4 to an ex- ceptional talent.
It was Peter who realized the musical talent in Nadia.
While all of the other kids were surfing at the beach. Nadia would be in her bedroom singing harmonies to all of the Beatles albums 053: You Can’t Do That as well as the Carpenters and Simon and Garfunkel…to name a few. Nadia was extremely artistic. At age 15 Nadia’s love of song became more than a hobby. She announced her intention to become a professional singer. Her focus was strong, and her progress was rapid.
In Australia, Nadia was featured with several different musical touring companies,
including The Fabulous Blues Brothers Band, and The Stars Of The Future.
She toured all of Australia and New Zealand and appeared on numerous TV broadcasts.
The Women Behind The Art of Psychotherapy!!!
After the loss of her father when she was 17 her tenacity, talent and drive took her from Australia to Asia, Canada and New York City… where she now resides. Since graduating from high school, Nadia thought she had to make a decision. She chose music and left the art behind. and has worked her way around the world with performances on morning broadcasts in Australia and hotel contracts in Asia to singing backing vocals at Carnegie Hall with likes of Sting, Billy Joel, Shirley Bassey, Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga, James Taylor and Ken Webb…She has been on quite the Human Experience. (just to name a few).
https://kenwebbsite.com/album/glue-of-you/
https://kenwebb.bandcamp.com/album/let-love-grow
In Early 1998 at 23 years old, Nadia decided to pack her suitcase and move from her native Sydney, Australia to New York City to pursue her dream of being a jazz singer in the big apple. After spending a summer in New York, she sensed there was no going home. What she didn’t realize is that she had brought a dark part of her past with her on the journey, and it wasn’t until years later that she came to terms with what had sent her running in the first place.
And mid-2006ish her own songs started to pop into her head. Since then, Nadia hasn’t looked back.
Today she has a catalogue of well over 300 compositions ready and waiting, while more are being jotted down almost daily. Join Nadia and her New York City Band on her journey from Allambie Heights to New York City
(which she calls home and creates classical music).
The Color Grey.
Here she shares her journey, through music, becoming a songwriter, then an illustrator,
a shop owner and brand developer. While ultimately confronting the abuse that she suffered
as a child in Australia (and that she had completely blocked for most of her life), until it was impossible to avoid any longer). First the flashback—something terrible that happened when she was six had to go. What would help her to eventually overcome that part of her life….was Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. Which is a fairly new, nontraditional type of psychotherapy. It’s growing in popularity, particularly for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD often occurs after experiences such as military combat, physical assault, rape, or car accidents.
https://awomensthing.org/blog/
artist-sexual-abuse-survivor-
nadia-ackerman-uses-creativity-heal/
TIME TO LIVE AGAIN 14:29 min
Once Nadia regain her life: Then suddenly, in early 2006ish she began to write songs, every day, clocking in at 9 in the morning and out at dinner time, She’d hurry his business as best she could and return to her work as quickly as she could. The songs were not “jazz” but they spoke of and to her singing talent to such a degree she has now undertaken the much more daunting endeavor of performing her own material
in some indefinable genre.
“It’s pop!” “It’s alternative!” “It’s jazzy alternative pop!” “It’s folky pop alternative !” “It’s a new jazz inflected alternative pop idiom heretofore never written or spoken of!” It’s Nadia!
And that’s why I guess ‘I’ am here to create music
Nadia spent years studying and performing jazz. Nancy Wilson, Carmen MacRae and Betty Carter became her teachers. Out of the blue, mid June 2006 Nadia began hearing songs in her head. Lyrics, Melodies, Harmony and Phrasing. The songs arrived in a complete form and more often than not she was writing two songs a day. Having never written a song in her life she was a little perplexed as to what to do with it.
However, this South African-born, Aussie-raised and now New York-based singer/songwriter Nadia Ackerman is unlikely to remain a relatively anonymous figure for much longer,, The Ocean Master, Named after her father’s fish & chip shop, it’s a record heavily inspired by a childhood spent by the sea on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, Also which bravely tackles her more painful experiences in among the rose-tinted slices of nostalgia. Indeed, lead single, “Mary Jane,” is something of a red herring, its jaunty sea shanty melodies based on a nursery rhyme she wrote as an infant (“Mary Jane went to Spain/in a chocolate airplane”) one of the few times the album attempts to quicken the rather solemn pace.
Luckily, the other uptempo numbers are less self-consciously kooky, sitting somewhere between the breezy organic acoustic folk of Yael Naim – “Le’ Live” to Laura Nyro and the disjointed jazz-pop of Regina Spektor The Light (“Lighthouse”). But it’s on the more stripped-back efforts where Ackerman‘s haunting lyrics and gorgeously melancholic tones truly work their magic, whether it’s the steel-laden wistful alt-country of
“Risk It All,” the subtle cello-driven “Underground,” which recalls Sheryl Crow at her most understated, Nobody’s Business & Best of Times or the Sigur Rós-esque choral backing vocals which are layered throughout the hymn-like “The Middle of the Sea,” and the haunting banshee balladry of “My Ship.” An unflinchingly honest trip down memory lane, The Ocean Master suggests singing about package delivery companies
should be a thing of the past.
Who is Natchie?
There is a bit of Natchie in her music.
In 2012, Nadia began to see her songs as images and felt an overwhelming desire to draw her music.
Out of that desire she became the owner and artist behind Natchie Art ( from the nickname her dad gave to her when she was 13. ) And each piece of art comes with lyrics and a free download code to own the song. In addition to her first retail store in DUMBO,
Nadia Ackerman doesn’t just write songs, she channels them. ‘They just happen to me,’ says the Australian-born, New York-based singer, songwriter and artist. ‘I can be doing anything and I’ll be hit with one. They stick to me until I can sit down at the piano and download them. And when the songs come out, they’re fully formed – words, tunes, arrangements, everything.’ Nadia’s short film Time To Live Again was been nominated for a 2017 Daytime Emmy Award by Healthination, produced & directed by Jacquelyn Lobel!!
The switch to an Indie pop sound seems to suit her, though–a switch she found inevitable when she began writing songs of her own at a very prodigious rate.
“The Circus Is Back In Town”, Nadia’s first release in the Indie pop mode and her first full-length album, showed a lot of potential and generated a little buzz. From those past experiences of
backing vocalist for the likes of Billy Joel, Sting, and Lady Gaga they helped me become who ‘I” am today, Nadia had appearance on Jimmy Fallon which perhaps helped her obtain singing gigs and ad jungle a.k.a. (2010) #UPS “We love #♥ That’s logistics” (that’s what Brown could do for her) to the tune That’s Amore
and in (2012) IAMS Dog Food advertising publicité that helps her pay bills.
In Some of Nadia’s Past work: it would be remiss for me to write and a shame if her
Christmas single, possibly the best recording on Nadia’s young resume, were to slip away unnoticed.
Nadia’s lament about a Christmas apart comes across as entirely genuine in it’s emotion, and the instrumentation more than does its part in establishing a melancholy holiday feel. Nadia’s no Rickie Lee Jones, but that is the first singer “What Is Christmas?” called to mind for me, followed by thoughts of Leigh Nash, Norah Jones and Ingrid Michaelson.
None of them quite fit–perhaps Nadia will make her own way after-all.
One thing’s for sure. You won’t get cheated.
You get a song that runs over 7 minutes and its really the perfect gift!!
Also Nadia’s music, however, doesn’t manifest itself out of thin air.
Almost all of her songs are an emotionally resonate retelling of her past. Its her experiences during her life – the trials and tribulations of her life coming of age compounded by a plethora of personal tragedies and triumphs – that continue to impact her music. When Nadia was asked if she could only have one album
to take if she were leaving this planet which would it be,
she chose, Hats, by Blue Nile, a group from Scotland!!
READ THE BENCH MARK ACCOUNTING OF HER CAREER ARTICLE:
. For the present TIME one thing is certain: I love the whimsical sound of Nadia Ackerman and all her CD’s… https://www.cduniverse.com/sresult.asp?qs=m345877
The Well – September 23, 2019 https://www.last.fm/music/Nadia%20Ackerman https://www.bing.com/search?q=
The+Well+++Nadia+Ackerman+&FORM=HDRSC1
The Fancy Pop – April 28, 2015 https://open.spotify.com/album/0gs3VZs4dYjWwvCYUVViaZ
https://www.bing.com/videos/
search?q=The+Fancy+Pop++Nadia+Ackerman++&FORM=HDRSC3
The Ocean Master – March 6 2012
https://www.allmusic.com/
album/the-ocean-master-mw0002293976
https://www.bing.com/search?
q=The+Ocean+Master+Nadia+Ackerman+&FORM=HDRSC1
The Circus Is Back in Town – March 10 2010
https://open.spotify.
com/album/1uxfLzGHzXxsriwe4WCxqI
https://www.bing.com/videos/
search?q=How+many+songs+has++
nadia+ackerman+composed&docid=
608014356286866032&mid=
9C4E37D07AA3312232159C4E37D07A
A331223215&view=detail&FORM=VIRE
Some Other Time = March 30, 2006
With her poignant but simple lyrics in The Circus Is back in Town in place on a variety of different melodies, With also from “Where Are You Headed Now”
with a bright and breezy beat about the day to day trials & tribulations and being lonely…to “Live Again” which is a dreamy tune that has a 60’s sound to it for me and “Underground” with a syncopated melody and “Leigh” to “Hulpit” (one of her new tunes) that has a haunting melody! I feel the pain of her life and the love the lyrics within your songs The Well | Clockwork Man | The Mourningtown
NADIA ACKERMAN… I Love You More
The recovered: How it feels to be alive on the other side of the pandemic!!!!