Amazing that it's been over a year since the pandemic began. I could have had a baby (God forbid!). You could have had a baby. We could have had twins...
Last March, when I finally posted after starting the year with a nasty case of food poisoning, I was hoping that things would get better. I was laughing at all the covidiots who were stripping the stores of everything from flour to toilet rolls. My faith in humanity disappeared very quickly. Then it disappeared completely.
I thought that I had something simple-like flu. I had all the signs of COVID-including loss of taste and smell-long before they were formally identified as symptoms. Of course, in my part of London, having no sense of smell is more than a blessing. It's a bloody miracle. So-I had COVID before the NHS even had enough tests to test everyone. And from there, things got much, much worse.
I kept receiving letters-one a week, like I'm doddery and can't remember anything? Seriously (everyone I know from the immunology clinic had the same weekly warnings, so I wasn't alone). I was told to stay at home, that I'm in an extremely clinically vulnerable group, that if I got sick and had to go to hospital I would die. I heard that from the government, from the NHS, and from my GP. Everyone.
To make matters worse, I got so fed up with all these dire warnings that I asked my team the next time I had to appear for my infusions. I also rang my GP, whose assistant told me that she had too many other patients to talk to me, but that I had to stay home for the next three months or I could die if I got sick. What is the point of telling me to go to the hospital if I get sick, I had to ask. Hospitals are full of sick people...
The short version: I was informed in a letter from the government, and one from the NHS, AND one from the GP that I would not be ventilated if ended up in hospital. If I contracted Covid I would die, because the doctors now had to choose which patients were "worth saving". So I was disposable. Unnecessary. A burden, even though I'd worked for most of my life. People think the NHS is brilliant, life-saving, heroic- and I know differently. To be told that you're superfluous, you'd be better off dying because it was actually the negligence of the NHS that disabled me in 2010-as if they cared. No points and nothing good to say about the NHS at all. When I said something to both my team and my GP, I was asked what I expected? I said that I expected them to try to save my life, that was what I expected. The unanimous answer: why? You are disposable. You've got a hereditary condition that requires constant vigilance. Why would they think of saving you? It's easier - and cheaper - to let you die.
I should have put that in quotes-but you get the idea...
So that was my year. Did I call an ambulance? Hell, no, not if I'm disposable, I would rather die at home. Let them find out when the body starts to smell.
So that was my year, and it was a pretty tough one. For most of the year I was horribly sick, I really thought that I was going to die, and there was nobody to help me. We were in lockdown. Then we were in lockdown again. And again. No wonder so many people became horribly ratty-although, watching and listening to people, I decided that most people were ratty before the pandemic.
Now it's nearly the end of May, and most of the past fourteen months were spent trying very hard not to die. If I was a cat, I'd probably be on my eighth life by now. But I survived, and I can tell you that Covid (I'm too lazy to use all capitals) is deadly. The after-effects last for months. But after-effects or not, I survived, and a lot of people didn't. I might even get to the point where I start making jokes again.
They might be bad jokes-but at least they're jokes. And, by the way, this is not the way I recommend for weight loss...
