ADs and their pampered poodles

[BogRollBOGOF]

Here we are again, gaining sequels even more rapidly than the Fast and the Furious...

Remember last week when the NHS was agonising over the beds being taken up and how they could not cope. Hmmm I thought they are softening us up because they are going to let people slip away now. Lo and behold the deaths shot up to 1800 plus.

Now to be fair Italy have done this since March, I saw a documentary back in the spring where paramedics visited the elderly with covid at home and frankly told the families, keep them warm and comfortable and see how it goes. When they left the homes they told the journalists it was hopeless no point in removing them to a hospital. Personally I think the italians were being kinder.

Can I write my big fear down here, & then I'll have got it out of my head, & might be able to get on with things today ( not dressed yet )

I worry that I either won't get to see my parents again, or that by the time the pandemic is gone, the effects of lockdowns & shielding will have aged them rapidly and robbed them of the reasonably good health & active lifestyles they had up until last March. I know that getting old is inevitable, but they weren't heading down this track until the pandemic started. Now they barely leave the house, they obsess over the shopping delivery, they are getting on each others' nerves. The lack of exercise, mental stimulation & change of scenery is already bringing about subtle physical & cognitive decline. I can hear it when we speak on the phone. It isn't meant to be this way, & it shouldn't be allowed to be happening. Just because someone is a certain age they do not need to fit a stereotype of sitting indoors 24/7, playing bingo dressed in crimplene slacks.

I know it's unhelpful to think about worse-case scenarios, or to worry about what you can't change. But with so little to occupy my mind - apart from work, which is like sensory overload these days- these worries bob to the surface.

It's been a really hard few weeks.

DrRamsesEmerson I felt every word of your post. Particularly about Covid being a merciful end for most.

I can only speak on this thread, the journalist Kate Garraway whose husband has been in hospital for months in a twilight state, he has holes in his lungs, heart. He spoke one word in October "PAIN" has she asked them to let him go, nope she has written a book about it. WHY??

I would ask them to let him slip away on humanitarian grounds.

Orchid do you mind if I ask, why don't your parents go out? Did they go anywhere in summer?

Mum is 82 and she has been the same as most people in this nonsense. There's good days and bad days. Some days we both look and feel a lot older than we are.

I still don’t understand the “life at any cost” mindset that many people have. Why is it inhumane to allow an animal to suffer but totally fine to do the same to a person. Surely life has to have meaning to the person concerned to make it worthwhile, not meaning to other people around them. I’d be sad to lose my nan but know she wouldn’t want to go on if she couldn’t knit, watch and understand sport and do her puzzles and I totally get that.

@TheOrchidKiller

Can I write my big fear down here, & then I'll have got it out of my head, & might be able to get on with things today ( not dressed yet )

I worry that I either won't get to see my parents again, or that by the time the pandemic is gone, the effects of lockdowns & shielding will have aged them rapidly and robbed them of the reasonably good health & active lifestyles they had up until last March. I know that getting old is inevitable, but they weren't heading down this track until the pandemic started. Now they barely leave the house, they obsess over the shopping delivery, they are getting on each others' nerves. The lack of exercise, mental stimulation & change of scenery is already bringing about subtle physical & cognitive decline. I can hear it when we speak on the phone. It isn't meant to be this way, & it shouldn't be allowed to be happening. Just because someone is a certain age they do not need to fit a stereotype of sitting indoors 24/7, playing bingo dressed in crimplene slacks.

I know it's unhelpful to think about worse-case scenarios, or to worry about what you can't change. But with so little to occupy my mind - apart from work, which is like sensory overload these days- these worries bob to the surface.

It's been a really hard few weeks.

My mum is shielding and has been locked in for months. Yesterday my dsis wrapped her up in her wheelchair and took her out in the fresh air. They stood at the end of our drive and she saw ds. It's done her the world of good. Who would have thought we would reach such desperation. It made me cry 😢

@dingit it is the small things that lift us.

@AcornAutumn
Dad was shielding the first time. Mum has OCD & spent the first 2 weeks of lockdown 1 indoors with him. She had an allergy-related cough but convinced herself it "might be covid" & that if she went into the garden her cough would float over the 6' high fence & hospitalise the asthmatic child next door. Dad eventually persuaded her to go into the garden.

I tried to get him to go for a drive in his car with a flask of tea but he is very law-abiding so wouldn't, incase he got arrested, despite me insisting the police didn't have everyone's medical histories on file. I drip-fed them stuff by the likes of Carl Heneghan & they slowly got it.

By August they were going out for walks, although I had to listen to rants from mum about joggers & "gangs" of walkers (ie 6 mums in the park with babies in prams).

In September they came to visit. They stayed in a hotel but sat in our house, we went out for walks, & mum managed some takeaway coffees & a meal in a restaurant. She admitted that it had done her a world of good. Dad went back to his volunteering role. Mum met friends for walks. They chose not to visit for Christmas well before the guidance changed & they got plunged into tier 4. To be honest it was a relief because she was getting more anxious again, & it's hard dealing with it sometimes.

Dad was advised to shield again but declared he wouldn't do it. Though there is nowhere to go anyway, & since they announced the new variant he has stopped going into shops. The volunteering has been shut down too.

They aren't going out because of the weather, because of her anxiety, & I suspect that like many of us, they are slightly depressed. They used to walk for miles but are now saying things like, "it's hard-going if we go too far." To which I say, "it's because you're out of practise."

They live 200 miles away. We can't just drop in to wave through the window.

Prior to this they were never at home. Dad saw his cancer diagnosis as a nuisence that got in the way of life. He was due to celebrate getting the all-clear with a flight in a plane that did stunts, & gleefully told me he'd had to sign a disclaimer that mum wouldn't sue if it went wrong & he died doing a loop-the-loop. The flight got cancelled due to bad weather (the irony) & then we had covid.

Sorry for going on. It helps to talk. They are 2 (mostly) rational people (even mum says "life is for living" when she's well). And they are currently stricken with fear & crossing the road if another person walks past.

Anyway, I am finally dressed, & trying to work on shooing away the black dog that is trying to sneak into my life.

(Bet you wished you hadn't asked).

@justasking111

I can only speak on this thread, the journalist Kate Garraway whose husband has been in hospital for months in a twilight state, he has holes in his lungs, heart. He spoke one word in October "PAIN" has she asked them to let him go, nope she has written a book about it. WHY??

I would ask them to let him slip away on humanitarian grounds.

I've wondered what the point is of keeping people going in this condition and then start thinking I'm an awful person. I would honestly rather be dead than be kept alive like that for months on end. If I can't have a good quality of life I'd rather not have one at all.

I made the mistake of watching that 90min documentary on people battling with covid in icu and honestly thought it might be better in most of those cases to give up.

Haven’t caught up at all - and am just heading out with the kids for a walk - where we just might happen to see friends; it would be a massive coincidence obviously. Just wanted to say that whilst I normally steer clear of the lunacy “over there” I have been extremely heartened by the responses on a thread about someone’s friend saying she is no longer going to follow the rules.

I said to DH I think the tide is turning.

Family chat shared some pictures of MiL recently. I can see the physical wastage just on photos. Admittedly she was on that pathway when we last saw her in October 2019, and wasn't going out much, but I'm not aware that she's left the house for anything non-medical since March. She's 89. Her mother made it to 96. But at 89, there's no guarentees of longevity. She's not expecting a vaccine until March as progress is far slower there.

DS1 hasn't seen an elderly relative in over a year now. When life reaches its conclusion as it inevitably must at some point, there will be little relationship for him to grieve.

Orchid I'm really sorry to hear all this. It sounds like a complex blend of factors which are essentially caused by the government fear mongering. I think that given their instinctive view of life, it sounds like they will bounce back.

Mum used to watch TV news all day but interestingly, after I rejected it and said I wouldn't talk about Covid, she went down to watching once a day and that really helped.

They certainly sound very reactive to government propaganda.

Oh @TheOrchidKiller I really feel for you. I think that older but active people have also had a raw deal throughout this. There is an assumption that the over 70s just sit in front of daytime television and never go anywhere. Whilst this may be true for some, there are a huge proportion of older people who have had their lives immeasurably curtailed due to the restrictions as well.

@TheOrchidKiller My parents were also very active before all this. My mum was diagnosed with cancer just before it started and is now pretty much disabled. It makes me feel very sad that the highlight of their day is me&DS dropping shopping and standing on their path after work/school. They had lots of friends and hobbies as well as us and now that's all gone and I can't see it coming back because they're so frightened.

This is happening over and over to people everywhere. There'll be a massive increase of people with agoraphobia and anxiety. I just can't see how society will become 'normal' again.

Someone said upthread about how they wouldn't have had a child if they'd know about this. I feel similar. I knew if I had DS I would have to do it alone. I was ok with that because I had friends, family, an ok job. Suddenly I've learned what having him alone actually means. It never crossed my mind I wouldn't be able to buy childcare if I needed it or that I might find myself unable to support us. When I think of his future and how different it'll be to what mine was at his age it makes me want to cry.

Orchid . Have you been able to see your parents? How old are they?

@DrRamsesEmerson Don't give up on theatre! It will be back. The people who run the theatres and the production companies haven't given up, and are using their considerable ingenuity and lobbying power to make it happen. I work in that area, and am currently involved in a building project for a new theatre - where the local authority are putting in lots of money. They haven't withdrawn their funding, as they think its going to happen in the end. And - in the short term - keep an eye out for open air theatre or concerts near you this summer - lots and lots of companies are planning things and, as long as the rules relax to the point that they did last summer, it'll be happening.

I made the mistake of watching that 90min documentary on people battling with covid in icu and honestly thought it might be better in most of those cases to give up.

My DF died of pneumonia a couple of years ago, and the doctors carried on trying to "save" him despite the fact that he was nearly 90, had very little quality of life because of a neurological condition and had wanted to die for a while (definitely was the old man's friend in this case). My DM was in ICU this time last year. They saved her, but if she had died then it wouldn't have been a disaster either, she's had a good innings. Of course, it's different for younger people who would have had more life to live.

Things do sound terrible for Kate Garraway and Derek Draper, but this from the Daily Mail made me

On New Year's Eve she reflects on a 'calamitous' Christmas without Derek, as her house was flooded and she struggled to get a food delivery slot until her pal Emma Willis stepped in to help.

It's the juxtaposition of a flooded house, which sounds genuinely traumatic with not being able to book Ocado (doubt it's Asda) that just sounds really strange!

With these so called new variants, I am willing to bet that there are many, many variants of the covid virus, in every country of the world. The variations that have been discovered so far are in countries where advanced testing is taking place. What about the countries with large populations but virtually no testing? The trouble is, we could go on for ever with this, everytime a new variation is found there will be mass panic in the government with the usual tedious results from Boris.
This has to end someday, you know. I bolster myself with dreams of a mass uprising (how about thousands descending determinedly on Bournemouth Beach on the first lovely weekend of the year? All ignoring the police and just peacefully doing what they came to do?) Also dreams of the collapse of the tory vote in 2024. Revenge will be sweet.
If the government try to 'keep us in' when cases and death have fallen, there will be a lot of very angry people - at least I hope so, and that people will wake up from this stupor into which they seem to have fallen.

@reedwarbler I very much hope you are right, and there will be a lot of angry people if the gov tries to keep the country locked down even when hospitalisations etc have fallen. However, my greatest fear is that the anger and uprising won't happen and the majority of people will meekly accept the gov's decisions. It is terrifying.

, @bakingcupcakes.

@Reedwarbler, I thought that too, but people, including young people, seem genuinely terrified of catching it. I find that baffling- obviously I don’t want to catch it, but at my age and in good health I’m really unlikely to be very ill. DD is more likely to be struck by a meteorite than to die of it. I suspect total failure to interrogate Government pronouncements so people won’t want to get on with life until they’re told it’s safe. Which gives the government much more powers than I feel comfortable with.

@MaudesMum, I thought that last year, but there was nothing over the summer and then everything I booked for in the autumn was cancelled (not the theatres’ fault, the Government pulled the rug out from under them). I wouldn’t want to risk reopening for live performance at the moment after that, and I’m afraid I regard anything screen based as such a pale shadow of the real thing that I’d rather not bother with it.

My parents are old and active . My dad was 80 in October has had his first vaccine now. The highlight of his week before lockdown was his weekly trip to the flying club, where he is learning to fly small planes !

Was feeling very despondent this morning, and like others thinking this is never going to end. But the sun is shining and we took the children out for a muddy 2 hour walk, then home for hot chocolate.

I have a bottle of wine chilling, and am going to do tapas for dinner, and hope that things will get better by the summer.

Thank you all for being so kind.

I work predominantly with older people so I know that being "old" means different things to different people, & that there's an element of luck involved, as well as attitude, as to how people experience old age.

I know that for some older people life may well not be what they want anymore. But for others- my parents included- life as an older person has been great! I feel annoyed by the "just shield all the elderly" opinions, like it's fine to shut away an entire section of society who still have so much to offer.

Some of my relatives have lived fulfilling & active lives into their 80s or 90s, but have also chosen not to prolong things right at the end, by declining treatments that won't bring benefits, & that's been the right decision.

For the first time in their lives my parents are saying things like, "you have to be careful at our age," whereas before all this they were, "you only live once, what are we waiting for?" On the one hand I want them to be well & come out the other side so that they can go bungee-jumping or whatever in the future, but the longer it goes on the more it feels like time is rushing us by.

I hope Acorn is right & that they'll bounce back. The light at the end of the tunnel keeps getting moved further away.

Going to try going for a walk now. At least I'll have something to talk about on the next phone call.

Hello everyone, I have been lurking since a few posts back and have enjoyed reading immensely. I am downtrodden by the misery of STAY THE FUCK AT HOME, WEAR A GOD DAMN FUCKING MASK OR YOULL KILL MY GRANNY, ANYONE THAT GOES OUT FOR ANYTHING IS A MURDERER and this is such a breath of fresh air.

I went out for a SD walk with a colleague and my kids today, it was a nice change of scenery (a local park we haven’t visited before) and just to chat to another adult... I’ve been homeschooling, I’m crap at it and it’s depressing. Anyway hello everyone and thank you for getting me through some tough moments :)

@Iheartmysmart

I’ve just ventured onto MSM and see the Daily Fail have a campaign to get computers for children struggling with lessons at home. Why not put that energy into getting children back into school with their friends where they belong.

I do so agree with this. What they should be campaigning for is a sensible plan for children to return to school as soon as possible. If that means vaccinating teachers ahead of some other groups, then fine. Constant online learning is not good for any children , particularly primary school children. The longer this goes on the worse the effects will be. Unfortunately I have zero confidence in Gavin Williamson’s ability to get such a plan going. Are they actually doing anything at the moment? It doesn’t feel like it.