Those Endless Days

Trust me, I really do appreciate how annoying it is when a person is persistently positive. 

Chirpy McChirpface in the face of obvious and insidious disaster. 
Little Miss Smiles when all around there is doom and gloom.
Bonnie Langford in a room full of Fr Stones. 

But I just can't help myself. 
I keep seeing so many good things in the world at the moment. Some of them are cringe-level stuff, like my children's snuggles or the bright yellow daffodils outside my window. Others are a bit more tangible, like the lazy mornings spent in PJs and tea-drinking, when we would otherwise be roaring at each other about swimming gear and money for football and no you can't wear those wellies to ballet. 

No restrictions on peanut butter usage.
No lunchboxes.
No uniform washing.
No near-fights with parents who believe that leaving the engine on in their 4x4 outside the school gates is perfectly acceptable behaviour.

More tea.

Witnessing the affirmation that the people who you knew were Good turn out to be Even Better.
Witnessing the corollary, and feeling smug about it. 

Remembering the times when I had to stay away from other people because they might make me sick, or they had to stay away from me because I might make them sick, and feeling that the world has a smidge more understanding now of how that felt. 

And yes, the fish in the Venice canals (although I am not so sure about the veracity of that one).

Technology turning out to be really quite easy to use, after all. People. 

Watching how a bit of motivation can encourage the most recalcitrant. 

Gardening.

Having a clean house and not resenting it.

Not having to wheel the same trolley around the same aisles buying the same food and queuing and paying and packing and unpacking and repeating. 

Feeling glad that the availability of hairdressers/nail technicians/tanning salons/teeth whiteners is entirely irrelevant to me. (I do miss my physiotherapist though).

I have a house with enough rooms in it that we can all spend time apart comfortably. 
I have a garden with flowers and vegetables and rusty scooters and goalposts and at least seven footballs. 
I have access to books, movies, TV series, video calls, music, paper, Scrabble. 
I can see greenery out of all of my windows. 
I don't have all the different foods that I might want or desire, but I have a grocery delivery slot booked, and I can afford to order a takeaway and pay the milkman and ask the butcher to drop me in some sausages. 

I have never been a big fan of shopping malls, and I pretty much hate buying clothes and shoes and make-up. 

I have low-maintenance friends who live between 300 and 3000 miles away from me, so this separation is not new for us. 

I am safe in my home. Abuse, addiction, animosity, antipathy - these do not loom large in my household.

These days could be so much harder. 

I am thankful. 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNJcd1pTaL0

Over The Top

I have consumed so much information in the past two weeks that whatever comes out of my head now is simply a mish-mash of other people's words, advice and opinions. I am no longer the master of my own thoughts. My consciousness is simply a stream of memes from fourteen different WhatsApp groups and my brain is no longer able to tell the difference between the Junior Infants Home-School-Mom-Drinks-Wine-To-Survive hilarity and the Learned-Colleague-Who-Knows-Their-Stuff-Says-We-Are-All-Doomed misery. 

A few phrases are lodged at the front of my brain (I have heard this being referred to as top-of-mind. Advertisers love when they can get their stuff to be Top of your Mind). Someone described the feeling in emergency departments around the country as being like the deep low tide sucking all the water from the land just before a tsunami hits. This then reminded me of William Wallace shouting HOLD! And someone else mentioned the final scene in Blackadder Goes Forth, when the lads go over the top. (To save you having to follow the links, I can tell you that none of these scenarios end particularly well). 

These are the fears of the medical community, and they relate not just to the likelihood that our hospitals and clinics will soon be flooded with people, but that the staff working in those hospitals will be washed away, trampled over or blasted apart by the illness itself. We are aware that many of the people who have died from Covid19 around the world have been healthcare workers. We know that those who work closely with sick patients are more likely to get severe illness than those who work more peripherally in the hospital. We also know that wearing the correct personal protection equipment (PPE) can dramatically reduce the risk of becoming infected. 

Ideally, every encounter between a healthcare professional and a patient right now would be carried out in the correct PPE. Ideally, one would err on the side of caution to reduce the risks of transmission to an absolute minimum. This would protect both the patient and the caregiver and ensure that enough people are well enough to provide healthcare to the hordes that need it. So, ideally, we would wear the right gowns, masks and gloves for each interaction, and have enough left over to have a few spares in case we need a wee half way through our shift.

However, the world does not have enough gowns, masks or gloves apparently (according to at least ten of my fourteen WhatsApp groups). So we need to ration them. Now, no one is saying that we should just throw ourselves onto the pointy swords of the marauding virus. No one is telling us to go over the top with just a little stick to fend off the machine guns. No. They are suggesting that we wear a gown, goggles, gloves and fancy mask when we are forcibly suctioning secretions out of a moribund patient in ICU. It would be a good idea to wear the full kit while intubating a young man who is struggling to breathe. It would be wise to have most of it on while examining the chest of a middle-aged woman who is coughing and spluttering uncontrollably. 

But what about when someone is sitting there with one of those persistent shoulder-curling coughs, but is otherwise not too bad? Or a fella with a high temperature but not much else wrong with him? Surely there's no need to go wasting precious resources for that? Or how about the elderly lady who knows she is dying, and has chosen to stay at home? Will a night nurse or a GP go into her house to help her to die well, wearing a full hazmat suit? Or not wearing any protective gear at all?

Every coronavirus death that is announced is given a designation as being "erra fair enough" or "god that's awful" depending on the presence or absence of the infamous "underlying conditions". It is quite surreal to hear this dismissal of the value of life, based on the fact that the person might have had a drop of asthma or a bit of the old stage 4 cancer. I think I can see the logic; the softening of the blow, the minimisation of panic. But I am not sure that the family of a 57 year old victim who happened to use an inhaler or took some tablets for diabetes are able to accept that he was simply a sitting duck. 

And what about the healthcare workers who also happen to have an underlying condition, or are a little more senior in their years? Should they retreat to their cocoon, pull the blankets over their heads, and let their greatly under-supported colleagues stand in front of the rampaging virus with their diminishingly-pointy sticks? Or should they throw themselves out in front, given that they now have Expendable written across their foreheads and their deaths can be put in the "ah well" category?

Let's face it, none of us filled in that CAO form thinking jaysus do you know what, I'd love to die for my country. Some of us filled it in with dollar signs in our eyes, and there are very few dollars swishing around the hospital corridors these days. Most of us signed up with a vague Miss Universe aspiration of "helping others", but not really ever envisioning that we would have to risk our lives just to listen to someone's chest. Sure, there are the hero doctors like David Nott and those other MSF types but we all know they are a bit left-field, a bit out there. Not like the rest of us. I watched the documentary "For Sama" before all this Covid carry-on started, and I found it incredibly moving but so, so far away. Now I think of the film-maker's husband and his colleagues working in those horrendous conditions, and how their lives have been so dramatically changed in a short period of time. This is what lies ahead for us, too. We are being forced into the roles of heroes, warriors, patriots, martyrs. When really we just wanted a nice house with a garden and a feeling of being useful. 

So we are scared and worried, and ashamed and embarrassed by those feelings. We are willing to climb the ladder into No-Man's-Land, but we wish we were in a massive armoured tank and not just carrying a small stick. Some of us may want to point out that we have a dicky heart, or flat feet, so that we can be legitimately sent home from the Front. We may even consider going AWOL. But in the end, most of us will do what is asked and expected of us, and some of us will do a lot, lot more. 

We are all trying to think of cunning plans, but in the end we may just have to take out our diaries and simply write, "Bugger". 

Coronatherapy

Like anyone else who has been through chemotherapy, I have a certain upper hand when it comes to dealing with the coronavirus situation. Those of us who have survived periods of very low immunity know all about hand-washing and cough-catching, and we are dab hands with the antiseptic wipes. We are used to keeping people at an arm's length, and giving virtual hugs. My children are familiar with me shouting "stay away" at them because of the number of times that I have been radioactive (and the odd few occasions when I have pretended to be radioactive just so I can drink my tea in peace).
So cancerheads have a teeny bit of smugness about them now, watching everyone else freaking out if they hear a stray cough on the bus or pulling their sleeves over their hands to open a door. We've been at this craic for ages now lads. We are pros at the germ-avoidance. 

We are also pretty nifty on the whirlwind-of-emotions front. We have been doing the Homer-Kubler-Ross thing for a long time, oscillating wildly from near and certain doom to a serene, hands-in-the-air acceptance. There is a limit to how long your brain can cope with imminent death, and sooner or later it reverts to trying to decide between Netflix and NowTV. 

I have no tips or advice that I haven't previously shared, but repetition is the hallmark of the lazy blogger, so here goes:

• It will all be okay. Even if it's not okay, it will be okay.
• Now that we are all cooped up together, your immediate family probably already have whatever germs you have, so hug them. (Briefly).
• Check in for information twice a day from a reputable source like the HSE or DoH, but do not go to Facebook seeking reassurance. IT WILL NOT BE THERE.
• Listen back to previous episodes of John Creedon's show. Not only will the music be soothing, it will be interspersed with news bulletins from days ago, which will probably be much better news than today's. 
• Walk in the fresh air and relish any socially awkward tendencies you may have - we now have a great excuse for nodding and smiling and moving swiftly along. 
• Start making Patrick's Day floats for the virtual parade in your back garden (we are particularly excited about this one - no crowds, hot tea, front-row views).
• Take delight in the fact that you'll finally get to eat the mung beans/liquid glucose/nori sheets that you bought after watching the 2016 season of Masterchef. 
• Watch the To-Be-Read book pile getting smaller and smaller. 

And remember:

WASH

YOUR 

HANDS!

(AGAIN)