Wednesday 6 October 2021

Tea And Sympathy

Hello, dear readers!

And welcome to germ central.

No, not me. I remain fairly hale, and mostly hearty. For someone with a chronic illness, anyway. I have no sniffles, no aches, no pains, no cough, and no sore throat.

Yet.

There is someone who has at least some of those symptoms, you see, and as I write, she’s sat right by the side of me. I am, of course, referring to my darling wife, Tina. She’s a woman who tends to get the odd mention in this esteemed publication, and, this week, it really is all about her.

SwabShop
Now, I can guess the first thought that has crossed literally some or more of the people reading this revelation and no, it’s not Covid. I can say that with a healthy (healthy?) degree of certainty because as part of the procedure to take Tina’s mum out from the nursing home she lives in,both myself and Tina have to take and register a lateral flow test. As, at the moment we’re trying to do reasonably regularly, that means we’ve had four swabs up the nose in the last week alone.


Of course, as soon as Tina started to show her symptoms (A sore throat, headache, a general stiff soreness, the sniffles, and a general impression she’s been taken over by the spirit of a particularly listless three-toed sloth, possibly one with concussion) she took another one and again that came up with the single line indicating no covid was present (although, having just seen on the telly that lateral flow tests are only accurate for people not showing symptoms, perhaps a PCR is in order?).

Heal Thyself
Assuming that is indeed the case, then Doctor Mark diagnoses a strain of the particularly bad cold which seems to be doing the round now that people are, um, doing the rounds. One could almost begin to suspect that there’s some link between virus and the hosts of the virus in the spread of the, uh, virus, unless, of course, it’s simply another way for the New World Order to inject you with microchips and make you magnetic.


Luckily, neither Tina nor I are what you might call social butterflies at the best of times (more like antisocial moths), so spreading these germs is not that much of an issue outside of these four walls.

Which just leaves me.

On that front, I’m going to tempt fate and say my somewhat wonky immune system actually seems to be doing a decent job. I’m yet to develop the slightest sniffle despite being on hand to wipe my wife’s fevered(ish) brow, make cups of tea and pass her things that are patently within reach. Even sharing a bed (don’t look shocked, we are married) doesn’t seem to have been exposure enough to cause my plucky little antibodies to wave the white flag.

Unstarted Sympathy
Of course, having committed this fact to paper(less blog), I now fully expect to become a snot monster myself. Hopefully, by that time, Tina will have staged at least a partial recovery and be on hand to offer me the sympathy I so very nearly managed to give her (does ‘man up’ count as sympathetic advice?)


 All levity aside, I think the aforementioned PCR test for Tina and a lateral flow for asymptomatic me will be in order in the very near future, just to knock out the possibility of the last 18 months or so of social distance being fruitless. After that, it’s bring on the tea and the paracetamol, and can you please blow your nose a little quieter.

Where’s a fisherman’s friend when you need one?

Until next week.

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