Janet's blog

Referencing the wider world, we're starting to get a bit excited/fearful about Covid restrictions easing. We're organising family walks/picnics - one in London somewhere and one in the country. We're looking forward to a trip to Devon in April. We've booked a vegetarian B and B hotel in the Lake District for the back end of August.  The children have given Christopher the green light to do the Saturday morning local shopping. Bury Farm are back to delivering manure and mine has arrived - many thanks to the muscle men who've scrambled to help me shift it - you know who you are. I've been planting a row of potatoes per allotment visit. I've shown vacant allotment plots to a couple of people. Am a bit twitchy about not having been called for my second vaccination, but trust that it will happen before the 12 weeks is up. It was a close thing, fitness-wise, but I did cycle in for this check up. It's the last of the two-weekly ones;  shifts to four-weekly from...

I think the count so far was one positive Covid test followed by two negatives. It didn't take long before the trial practitioners were on the phone again - the Friday before I was due for the third check up. This time they were relaying the word of matron who wanted another negative test before they'd allow me into the hospital/Macmillan Centre. This time I did splutter a bit. Ridiculous, overkill, how would I get a test done and the results back before Tuesday anyway, that sort of thing. Spluttering over, the trial practitioner agreed to go back to matron and I agreed to try to get a test.  I couldn't face asking the surge test people again, so went online to request a test - 'for research' I think I said. Test arrived in the post on Saturday but not early enough to catch the post, so sent it off on Sunday by the special Covid Priority Post Collection. Royal Mail may have served their sub-postmasters and postmistresses very badly in recent years but they've pu...

An eventful week, at least against the low bar of a Covid lockdown. Prepare for tedious detail. We'd had a heads up through the street WhatsApp group, and when I got home from the hospital on 2 March, the confirmation lay on the door mat. The Barnet flyer announced that the South Africa Covid variant had been found in an East Finchley householder and that testing would be surging through the area. A dutiful citizen and stimulated by novelty, I booked tests for both of us bright and early the next day at the East Finchley station mobile testing unit - in the expectation that it would be done by a trained person. On the day, at the end of a queue, there was a chair before a small table and a mirror. Of course, it would be a self-test.  For reasons Christopher found hard to understand but which still seem obvious to me, I opted to pass on doing mine in the open air, in a cold car park, in front of a gaggle of people. Instead I asked for a home test, so that I could search for my tonsi...

Here I am again.  (Was again - late post) Have done all the usual - BP, weight (creeping up, but they like that here), temperature, oxygen saturation, grilling by trial nurse, quality of life questionnaire, seen Dr M. Next cycle's pills ordered from clinical trials pharmacy but they won't be ready for at least an hour so it's hot choc and banana time. Symptom-wise I reckon I now feel sick only half the time. There's a tiredness but am pacing.  Have had a second urinary tract infection in the last week which is annoying - I do hope this is not part of the new normal. Has cleared up quite quickly with nitrofurantoin. There was a related cartoon-like episode that will take a bit longer to get over. The scene -doing some slash and rot-down-in-a-big-pile work in the overgrown orchard of an elderly lady at the allotments. Nitrofurantoin started but not fully effective and I found I needed a wee NOW!!! If you've had a UTI you'll sympathise that there was no time to mak...

 Well! That was efficient! Bloods, weight, BP, temperature, computer-led symptom check with trial practitioner,  trial quality-of-life questionnaire, symptom check and physical exam with doctor all done between 9am and 10:30am. I was able to report that although I basically feel sick all of the time, which is wearing, it's not so bad that I'd want to put up with the side effects of anti emetics AND I've recently had a couple of episodes of not feeling sick. This doctor was the first person to suggest that the nausea often wears off by the six-week mark and it was a good sign that I'd been free of it already, albeit briefly. Very hopeful. However, right now feeling a bit sick so getting outside a hot chocolate. Calories little and often... I've been very disciplined about taking my trial pills - it might not be so if we weren't in lockdown. There would be many more opportunities to dash out early to beat the rush at museums or art galleries and thus miss the 9am ...