Day 5 News just in!

Saturday 14th November

We have a quiet day neither of us are inclined to do anything, we both feel strangely exhausted. We are coughing continuously. We remember 2018 when we both had whooping cough at the same time and how we got through that. My sats are a cause for concern, they are dipping to 93%, I can still get them back up but never higher than 95%.

Just after lunch Brumsky Korsitsacoff tells me we have had a text confirming I am positive. I don’t hear anything else she says. I am in a vacuum, loud roaring in my ears, I stare at her. I can’t speak for a minute or so.

“Ok” I finally say, but it’s not ok, what I have dreaded for months has been confirmed.

We talk about all sorts of things, my erudite, intelligent, funny, wise wife, is the best company at any time ever. We sit and snuggle up on the sofa, snoozing the day away.

My sats hit 92% for the first time. I call 111 for advice. Eventually I get put through to GP who I used to work with in Broadmead Walk in Centre, a job where my patients were either tourists, students, sex workers or homeless, or any combination of these. It’s great to talk to him we were the pair of us very proactive in our roles and had a great time challenging existing practice initiating training and reaching sessions. We had a nice little chat and then he told me if my sats stayed at 92 I was to call 999. He gives me the direct clinical line number so I can ring straight through to the GP desk if I need advice.

On Facebook I post

News just in! Covid test positive! Holding me own so far, thanks for all the positive messages, really feeling the love xxx

As the evening draws on, I feel increasingly breathless. My sats are always at 92 now when I check. We are exhausted, we both go to bed, Brumarella falls into a deep sleep, but I cannot settle. I can’t lie flat without feeling like I am suffocating. I get up, Brum must be knackered because she always wakes when I get out of bed, not this time, she is flat out.

I call the GP help desk. I get a different GP she tells me to walk I up and down “40 brisk steps or to stand from sitting 20 times quickly” Like a fool I walk 40 brisk steps, into the kitchen and back to the front room my sats touch 95%

“There you go” she says “Every time you feel breathless just do that or run up the stairs!”

This profession has always been plagued by fools, I dare say she meant well and must have based her advice on something, but running upstairs when you are breathless puts you in the Darwin awards class of idiot.

It’s going to be a long night! Every hour or so I get up put on the sats probe and do 40 brisk steps. Who is the bigger fool?

Covid Christamas

Christmas is coming and people are getting restless. Why not just forget the Lockdown for a few days and make merry? Well, the virus doesn’t take holidays, it works all days, all hours 24/7/365 a bit like most NHS staff. And it really doesn’t care about cake or candy canes or crackers. But it does love a family gathering, any gathering in fact.

And like most people Covid has relatives coming to stay. There’s Influenza for example, informally known as Auntie Flu. That comes in round about the end of November although there’s a possibility that social isolation will result in it being not so wide spread this year or even delaying its first presentation. From what I have been told by those in the know, a combination of Covid and flu can be very bad indeed and the risk of death is doubled where there is co-infection. https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3720

And then there is the naughty cousin Norovirus, combined with Covid the symptoms of almost constant diarrhoea and vomiting become so much worse due to the side effects of the steroids and antibiotics required to treat Covid.

Any reduction in social distancing is bound to have a knock-on effect in the number of Covid cases and at a time of the year when the NHS is at its most vulnerable. Hospitals have been devastated by the virus, one ward at Southmead had twenty nurses off sick with it and there were over 400 staff off in total.

Why only Christmas anyway? What about all the other religious holidays at this time of the Year? Are we really a Christian only country? I know very few practicing Christians; I am sure most of us just want to party which we could do just as easily when the danger has passed.

Hanukah runs from 11th -18th December will there be an exception made for Jewish families? Somehow, I doubt it.

The simple truth is any suspension of Lockdown will just extend the life of the virus. Remember Covid is not just for Christmas, for some people it will be for life.