since my last post.
So the first two weeks of lockdown were just me trying to maintain some semblence of normality. The past 10 days have been spent digging a veg garden, pottering around and catching up on telly.
So the first two weeks of lockdown were just me trying to maintain some semblence of normality. The past 10 days have been spent digging a veg garden, pottering around and catching up on telly.
Then all that got put on hold when I saw an advert asking for people to make medical masks for local care homes and GP surgeries on a local forum. The garden will wait, my seedlings are growing but still have more time before they need to be planted out. It'll happen. Other needs must at the minute. I can't get my head around the fact that PPE still isn't getting to those who need it most. Today, four, five, six weeks into this pandemic here in the UK, the Health Minister decides just today, that it's time to start testing the elderly leaving hospital before they are put into a care home. The previous practice was just to send them without a test. And they wonder why the corvid virus has spread like wildfire amongst our elderly in care homes?
So we take up the slack. We have a merry band of 40+ women sewing masks from material they have cobbled together, or begged from donations. We know they aren't of the standard needed to stop the virus pentrating them, we can only hope that they are better than the nothing which is currently on offer ánd will at least help in some cases. Even if they are used by staff for non-corvid cases, so that the real deal protective gear can be reserved for those on the front line of the pandemic, then at least it's something.
So we take up the slack. We have a merry band of 40+ women sewing masks from material they have cobbled together, or begged from donations. We know they aren't of the standard needed to stop the virus pentrating them, we can only hope that they are better than the nothing which is currently on offer ánd will at least help in some cases. Even if they are used by staff for non-corvid cases, so that the real deal protective gear can be reserved for those on the front line of the pandemic, then at least it's something.
I've given up watching the news now on TV. Standard platitudes and no real answers coming from our government. I wouldn't wish this pandemic on my worse enemy, but I feel there are many who could have managed it better than those we have in charge at the moment. I vary between trying not to be too cynical and just thinking them inept, and the other extreme of this somehow playing out exactly as they want it to.
On a more personal and more important note, last night I found out my sister was admitted to hospital in Newcastle on Sunday night. She has a progressive form of MS and has been in hospital and a rehab centre for the best part of this year. I think she has only spent around three weeks at home so far this year. Her last admission was three weeks ago. She was told she had a UTI, and was discharged before she was better. They needed the beds for corvid patients. Her discharge letter to her GP said she had urosepsis, something the hospital had omitted to tell her. She has spent the last three weeks at home, quite unwell, until Sunday when she could bear it no longer and called an ambulance. The paramedics didn't want to admit her, and hospital was the last place she wanted to be given present circumstances, but she was beyond the care of her partner so they reluctantly took her into hospital. After a chest x-ray she was told that she had the same abnormality as was shown on the chest x-ray she had 3 weeks ago. The x-ray that the hospital had said was clear. So it turns out she has had a chest infection for the past three weeks without knowing it.
We realise the hospital is under duress with the corvid epidemic but she was understandably angry to find out that not only had they missed the abnormality on the first scan, but she had been discharged with another condition she knew nothing about. My sister has fire in her belly. She will stand up and fight her corner. The only light at the moment is that she is mentally well and ready to fight with her mental capacity, even though physically she is very depleted.
It's really hard to see her go through this and not to be able to go and see her, not being able to hug her, and to have to suffice with a telephone call, one side of which is on speaker phone because she doesn't have the energy to hold her phone.
In the midst of all of this I am grateful that she doesn't have the corvid virus. I know how much worse that would be, and how many more dangers that entails. I went there mentally and emotionally last night and ended up in a state, so today I am trying to be more positive and look for where the light is shining. Hopefully once her antibiotics kick in she will gain strength enough to fight this latest infection and she will get to go home again.
We realise the hospital is under duress with the corvid epidemic but she was understandably angry to find out that not only had they missed the abnormality on the first scan, but she had been discharged with another condition she knew nothing about. My sister has fire in her belly. She will stand up and fight her corner. The only light at the moment is that she is mentally well and ready to fight with her mental capacity, even though physically she is very depleted.
It's really hard to see her go through this and not to be able to go and see her, not being able to hug her, and to have to suffice with a telephone call, one side of which is on speaker phone because she doesn't have the energy to hold her phone.
In the midst of all of this I am grateful that she doesn't have the corvid virus. I know how much worse that would be, and how many more dangers that entails. I went there mentally and emotionally last night and ended up in a state, so today I am trying to be more positive and look for where the light is shining. Hopefully once her antibiotics kick in she will gain strength enough to fight this latest infection and she will get to go home again.
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