Day 18

Today was a funny day, one of those sort of rollercoaster days. It started off badly, I woke up to find my wife in tears beside me in bed. Today is chemo day, and to be quite frank, she is scared shitless - not of the chemotherapy, but the going out, again, and spending hours sitting in the chemotherapy suit. She is so scared of the virus and what it could do.

Having gone 6 months since getting the news she has cancer she has gradually pulled herself up, pretty much from the depths of despair before Christmas, to a point where she had a degree of resignation about her condition. She knows that she will never be "cured" and that she is going to spend a lot of time in and out of hospital for chemotherapy, bloods, radiotherapy and more - but at least she knew we were heading in the right direction.

Then along came the virus and knocked her for 6, mentally. We have been in shielding now for 18 days without seeing anyone, other than to talk to my daughter from an upstairs window, my wife has been "in" another 3 days on top of that, so she has already done 3 weeks of not going out, catchy title that, maybe someone could use it!

It is amazing how quickly you become institutionalised, how used to not doing things, so when she has to go out into the big scary world it becomes doubly difficult - being one of the special 1.5 million doesn't help either!

We got off early and made Maidstone in no time, it's amazing how much difference the lockdown has made to the traffic levels, there are next to no vehicles out there, very few private cars, a few lorries and very few liveried vans, clearly white van man is taking time off work, probably sitting at home stoking up the BBQ and having his mates round for a few beers.

I know I shouldn't joke about these things, but this is a worrying weekend, with it being an extended one for those still at work, and the weather being forecast as good. This will be a real test for people's resolve and how much they want to help, if they favour saving lives over having a Bank Holiday weekend.

Talking of which, one of the consequences of being in shielding is you lose track of time and days. Neither of us had realised tomorrow was Good Friday - not that it makes a lot of difference - just an excuse to eat more chocolate!

Anyway, back to today. After dropping the wife at the hospital I came home to spend some time with our little man. We have been so wrapped up in everything that is going on at the moment that we've probably not paid him as much attention as we would like. So it was really nice for me to spend the whole day with him. I hadn't been tasked with any jobs today, apart from a couple of phone calls, so he had my undivided attention - not that he noticed!

I spent a few hours, sitting in his playhouse with him, while he climbed all over me. I kept him fed and watered and he was very happy! He was so happy with the situation that he didn't even go on his favourite, the trampoline... it was good to spend time with him.

The icing on the cake for today though, was the news that my wife no longer has to have her evening injection of blood thinners, after having to give her a nightly jab of Fragmin for the last six months, it was a pleasure, both for her and me, for her to just take a tablet. She is now on a tablet every morning and again every evening. This had been causing her so much distress it feels like a weight lifted off both of our shoulders.

So we move forward, baby steps on the road to recovery and also hopefully positive news on the virus!