It scares me.
I'm not scared of my mother getting it and dying... her brain is half dead already and the rest's not far off; she would not be at all happy to be living like this. But I don't want her drowning slowly in her own mucus without decent palliative care because the hospitals are clogged and home visits are out of the question at peak infection. Nobody with dementia is going to be at the front of the queue for perfectly rational and perhaps even semi-merciful reasons. These kind of choices are being made right now in Italy.
The scary thing will be if, as an asthmatic, I get it badly and struggle to care for Mum when she needs it most. There won't be respite places available, especially from covid-19 households, and the only assistance I have is from someone immunocompromised and about to start treatment requiring a long period of isolation, so she can't be popping in to help even if she was happy with the idea of exposing herself to the common cold here, let alone covid-19.
I've got things set up in the house as best I can -- supplies of everything including medication easily accessible to me -- in preparation for getting ill (hopefully not at exactly the same time), but those who get this thing badly seem to have a
real struggle for a week or two... or three. I'm using their first hand accounts as a guide to how I might feel and have a few ideas for getting us through a bad stretch which I'm not going to put down in writing... Apart from the bit about surviving on peanut butter sandwiches and cheesy baked beans bunged in the microwave for a minute or two. Calorie dense and nutritious for both of us, if we feel able to eat.
It seems to me that most of us will get this thing eventually, it's just the luck of the draw how badly we're affected and how well the NHS is coping at that particular time as to how much assistance we get. And while I might sound a bit alarmist, I think this is the time to be pragmatic and plan ahead as much as possible, rather than cheerfully whistling in the wind.
Be positive by all means... there's a blackbird singing outside our window at the moment. It's absolutely glorious to hear and is helping take the edge off another tough day at the dementia coalface. But just because we're used to tough times does not necessarily mean we're well placed to cope with what's brewing. The truth is, nobody is. So channel the positivity into a plan for what you'll do if things start to go pear-shaped for you and help is thin on the ground for a while.
And keep listening to the blackbirds. They've been singing like that since before we were wandering around the Serengeti chasing wildebeest. They'll be doing it long after we're all pushing up daisies and feeding the worms the blackbirds feed on. In the grand scheme of things, our fleeting troubles mean nothing. But at the time they can be rather irksome!
Here's hoping it all blows over soon the only hard part will be me looking back at this post and wondering why I was so daft. I may also be looking for new recipes involving beans, cheese and peanut butter.
Good luck all.