Brave proof ANYONE can cope with this nightmare
DEAR BEL,
FOR a very long time I have been moved by your column, but never thought in a million years I would write to you. Now — here I am. My husband is in intensive care with coronavirus and has been on a ventilator for nearly a week.
I am told I mustn’t leave the house or have anyone in for 14 days since our last contact. I have never in my life been so alone, yet can honestly say I’m not lonely.
The support my two daughters, son and six gorgeous grandchildren are giving me over WhatsApp and Skype is wonderful. My friends and relatives, including 98-year-old Dad, are also there for me — although not physically. I count myself so lucky that such lovely people hold me up.
I’ve had two middle-of-the-night calls saying prepare for the worst, but my husband has battled on. There is no visiting at all, but the nurses have found the time (heaven knows how) to ask how we are coping as a family with not being able to visit.
Each evening, I have a gin and tonic with my neighbours, over the garden fence, me standing on a step to see them at a distance. Another neighbour pops the Mail through the door each day.
My children drop off meals and sit in my porch while I sit well away inside. I’m reading a lot, writing a diary, talking to friends, keeping in touch with the news.
I ring the ward every few hours to check on my husband’s condition. As they’ve got busier, I now ring three or four times between 8am and 9pm. This morning it got much harder, taking two hours to get through. When I did . . . sadly, no improvement. I am sure it will all be fine.
Incidentally, the hospital asked if I could remove Sky Shield from our landline. When I rang Sky, because the password needed was on my husband’s iPad (with him), they said I needed either power of attorney or proof of death to proceed!
I said surely they’d be getting thousands of calls like mine — so, after speaking to two managers, they managed to do it for me. They had even suggested emailing my husband to change his password or speaking to him in hospital! Of course, no one is prepared for this, but an understanding from everyone of what being on a ventilator means would be so much kinder.
My heart goes out to others going through this absolutely unbelievable experience. It is a nightmare — but humans are incredible and we can find inner strength to cope.
Don’t you think maybe we’re all stronger than we think? GLYNIS
This letter is extraordinarily brave and powerful, and i’m honoured that you chose to write to me.
There will not be a single person reading this who hasn’t been wondering, in recent weeks, how it would feel to be in your situation. Yet here you are, generously sharing your story in these stalwart words and offering a piece of sensible advice, too.
i mean, of course, your point about that password. Many of us spend a frustrating amount of time wrestling with the dreaded demon password — and you are quite right to suggest that people in any sort of officialdom must understand that these are not normal times and therefore rules must be bent or broken.
May i also add the thought that it’s areally good idea to make sure that trusted loved ones know — and can remember — the passwords to key services and utilities. Just in case.
Perhaps it takes a universally shared threat to make many people realise that for all of us setting our various affairs in order is a practical act of responsible love for our nearest and dearest.
it is so moving to read how much you value the support you are receiving from family and friends, of your evening gin and tonic ‘date’ with your friendly neighbours, and of the way nursing staff have taken the time (when they must be frantic as well as desperately worried) to think about how you are coping.
Yes indeed, ‘human beings are incredible’ — and in recent weeks we have seen countless examples of their kindness and
courage. When people bewail to me the wickedness of the world, I always remind them that the struggle between good and evil is never ending, but the countless uplifting stories of ordinary human decency remind us that (in the words of John Betjeman) we are ‘little lower than the angels’. So we must never give up hope.
Your letter is so full of hope it humbles me. That phrase ‘I’m sure it will be fine’ brought a tear to my eye.
All I can do is join you in that optimism and wish you more of the strength you display here.
You have reached deep into your own heart to write — and display that inner strength we all hope will be ours, if required to face up to the worst time of trial, compared to which merely having to keep indoors is nothing at all.