PAUL ROUTLEDGE
Looking forward is key
WHEN Boris was admitted, how was he treated?
I can’t comment on his case but I can give information that might apply to other patients. If people aren’t that unwell they might be given fluids into a vein or standard oxygen through a mask.
If someone is diagnosed with pneumonia as a complication of Covid they’d be given antibiotics as well.
Doctors might also give antiviral Tamiflu, not to treat
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I NEVER believed lockdown would end yesterday, as originally decreed.
And like a prisoner in his cell, I have a countdown of numbers from 84 to one hanging on my wall. Each day of the likely 12-week sentence, I cross one off. Today is 61.
It might be childish, but I like to see this long journey diminish bit by bit, until normality returns.
Of course, it might not. By mid-June we may still be in pandemic turmoil. I cancelled our anniversary trip to Filey this weekend, and the family reunion in Pickering in
Covid, but for flu they might have picked up. Doctors might also give painkillers and cough medicine.
In the few patients who become seriously ill, mechanical ventilation, in which a tube is passed down the airway, to help a patient breathe would be used.
Alongside all this is good nursing care, kindness and compassion, which we know is being given by our excellent frontline carers. mid-July looks decidedly dodgy. So much has gone from the calendar. Mrs R is seriously miffed at the loss of Wimbledon and the cricket.
As a paid-up puffer-nutter, I’m brassed off that steam trains won’t run on heritage railways for months. And no spring canal walks.
But you have to have something to look forward to in life. Even the prisoner knows when he’ll be free. In this country, anyway.
I’m pinning my hopes on the annual Unison Race Day, due on 1 August – Yorkshire Day – at Doncaster. It’s the social highlight of our year.