Having been given the nod to proceed with treatment, I was dropped off at the cancer ward for cycle 2. The reception was not particularly quieter than normal, and the only difference was the self-check-in kiosks were not available: given the ability of the virus to linger on hard surfaces, a wise precaution. Things were different when I went over to the day-unit to commence treatment: I had never seen it so quiet. Clearly a significant number of patients had elected to cancel treatment, or had had it cancelled.
At this point, it maybe is worth explaining the process of my particular treatment: I get taken to one of about 20 comfy chairs, get an IV line hooked up to my chemo-port, and then sit there for 2-3 hours as a series of drips, treatments, and whatever are pumped into me. Once all done with the in-house stuff, I get hooked up to a slow release pump and go home.
Generally all the chairs are full, and patients have a family member or friend sat with them, and there is a calm, but definite, buzz of activity. This time, there were only a few chairs occupied, and no visitors were permitted. Normally I would watch some films on my tablet, listen to the radio etc, and basically speak to no-one but the nurses and support staff. This time however all the patients were flying solo, and it meant we actually spoke to each other. I ended up spending the bulk of my 3 hours chatting to a lovely lady in the chair opposite.
And with that, I was done, and off I went home. The only downer for this cycle is that due to volume of patients, the pump disconnection was shunted to Monday, from its normal Sunday. Disconnection day, as you can imagine, is the highlight of the treatment fortnight. It means I can revert to normal, sleep better, shower better, basically everything is better. But, in the current greater scheme of things, no big deal.
By Sunday morning, my wife had managed to get a flight home, and she arrived. Given she had travelled through potential hot zones, and certainly had not maintained 2 metres of distancing for the entire journey home, she had to go into isolation. We are lucky that my MIL lives next door (and it requires less than 10 steps on a private, barely used, road to move from ours to hers), so I moved in there, and my wife commenced solitary. The weather was nice, so we were able to commence social distancing happy hours, with me and the MIL sat at one end of the garden, and my wife at the other. I also started delivering meals on a tray, leaving it in the hallway, and then scarpering. I have a home office in the house, accessible by french doors from the garden, so I was also able to let myself in and avoid the rest of the house.
And so that is pretty much how the next week went on: our 3 person, 2 house commune shut itself off from the rest of the world, with none of us leaving the houses. Indeed, the next time I left, after pump disconnection on the Monday, was a week later to head to the local doctor surgery for bloodwork in advance of the pre-assessment call for cycle 3. We are well set for food and supplies: the local stores and pubs have rallied amazingly, the former bringing in home deliveries, the latter selling on, and indeed delivering, produce that would normally have been used for in-house catering. Even for someone like me, usually the most cynical of cynics, it has been heartwarming to see the very best of people come to the surface. Case in point is the call for NHS volunteers in the UK to assist the 1.5m designated vulnerable people (basically me and 1,499,999 others): the hope was for 250k people to sign up, last time I looked 750k or so had done so.
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