Argh! I couldn’t start this without acknowledging ‘going public’ with this blog last week. I could spend the entirety of this post gushing, but I promise I won’t. I just want to say however, that I am truly overwhelmed by the kindness and positivity that has come my way, so thank you to everybody who has sent me messages of support.

I’ve seen a lot of cancer patients documenting the fact that they don’t feel like their lives have changed much since lockdown. I feel differently, everything has changed in my world. I understand where patients are coming from when they refer to the familiarity of living with a future unknown and the similarities associated with Coronavirus… That bit, I get. But daily life in quarantine for me is definitely not close to anything I have experienced before.

Since starting treatment, I have never been advised to avoid people or to be extra careful about getting sick. I live with a toddler who goes to nursery most days, and 2 teens who are constantly mixing with others, and so this would have been near on impossible for me anyway. I was pretty much able to carry on like the rest of the world when it came to socialising, going to work etc. Then, came ‘the letter’. Most people are aware of the letter – in my case from the Chief Medical Officer for Wales – categorising me as high risk when it comes to COVID-19. It basically states that I am to stay indoors for the next 12 weeks, do nothing and see no one.

We are absolutely taking this seriously, and are being overly cautious with shopping and disinfecting every surface regularly throughout the day. However, it feels strange to be deemed as high risk when I feel exactly the same as Rich and Nate do. I also feel like I’m putting myself at a higher risk of catching COVID than most of the people in my family, as I’m spending a fair amount of time at hospital appointments where I’m inevitably crossing paths with a lot of people. That being said, I truly am so impressed with the measures that have been put in place at Velindre – at the beginning of last week I went in for blood tests and then the following day for my treatment, and it was a little bit like trying to get in to prison, the amount of checks I had to go through to get in the front door. One of them included me standing far away and a nurse shooting me with a laser gun to check my temperature. 

As I’d like to reiterate though, I’m pretty much finding lockdown the same as everyone. I have good days and bad days. Days when I feel grateful for the extra time to cook, read, play with my kids, and days when I long for a return to normality.