We recently had a 'National Day of Reflection' about the Covid-19 Pandemic, marking five years since the first lockdown orders were issued. The week after the day of reflection, I met up with my former work colleagues Heather and Tracy, and we talked about the last week we worked together, as in, together in the same office.
We were a team of three who worked in an office tucked away under the Children's Hospital. I used to refer to the room as the bunker, because although we had a window, we were well below street level. The window looked out onto a concrete area surrounded by high walls. We were located below a ward that acted as temporary housing for patients from various wards as wards elsewhere in the hospital were being renovated. In the time we were there, the ward was a cardiac ward, then a renal ward, then something else.
In early 2020 it got turned into a respiratory ward. Patients admitted with breathing difficulties caused by the new virus were being cared for there. I found this out in an inter-departmental meeting on a Tuesday morning. I also knew the kitchen serving that ward was located just down the corridor from our office and staff were preparing food for the ward and transporting food trolleys along the corridor without any protective gear.
I went back to the office and said to Heather and Tracy that we needed to pack up our things, take our laptops and work from home for the rest of the week until we got some clear answers. Within an hour the three of us had left the office... and that was the last day we worked there.
Just before I moved to a new job the office was permanently requisitioned for another team and I went in with Heather to clear it. I threw away so many half-completed to-do lists!
Covid hit our wider network hard. Many of the teams we worked with had staff redeployed. There was a huge shift to virtual consultations and home working. Most of our teams had tried to start virtual consultations but had always been frustrated by a lack of support from IT and sometimes point blank blocking by Information Governance. Suddenly, everyone was on Microsoft Teams and encouraged to talk to patients that way. As one consultant said to me 'For years we have been trying to go virtual, and all it took was a global pandemic...!"
I feel a bit guilty, really, talking about my experience working in healthcare during the pandemic. I recognise that I got off very lightly. I know people who ended up in Nightingale Hospitals and others who were given minimal training handling needles and were launched into vaccination centres. One former colleague worked in ICU and talked about having to intubate people she worked with who had caught the disease.
But my experience was being at home, locked away. Cathy and I spent more time together than we had done for years. It was nice eating lunch together every day. Yes, it was all a bit scary. I was flicking through an old journal and for a long time I was noting the covid death statistics that were being published daily.
Along with journaling, I got into blogging a lot more. One of my lockdown projects was launching my (now sadly neglected) blog about baseball cards featuring Tony Gwynn. That was one of several Lockdown Projects, which I wrote about in May 2020.
I didn't blog excessively about the pandemic, but I did record some things, which make an interesting read now, with the benefit of hindsight. (That Lockdown Projects blog post was the first mention of the pandemic on my blog.)
In the first few months of the pandemic, lots of people put home made rainbows in their windows as a message of hope and solidarity with each other. Blog post: Grangetown Rainbow Art
Shortly after the Covid-19 lockdown began my Uncle Malcolm and my good friend Ben both died, although not from Covid. I wasn't able to go to their funerals, which added to the pain. Blog post: The fractional losses, being human in a viral world
A bit like the Rainbow Art thing, we joined in the first Grangetown Zoo.
In the October, lockdown had been eased a bit and then suddenly returned. Blog post: Lockdown freedoms (a "Fire Break" post)
At the end of 2020, I listed five positive things from the year. One of them was being at home for Christmas - yes, it was another lockdown but it was still nice. That was the Christmas my mum went to Edinburgh for Christmas at my sister's and wasn't allowed back into England for four weeks due to emergency travel restrictions.
By February 2021, I was really missing going to football matches. As a result it felt like the 2020-21 season never really happened at all.
But then in March I got called for my first covid vaccination, in the repurposed former Toys R Us building in Cardiff Bay. It wasn't long before it was known as Jabs R Us. Blog post: Jabbed
I really remember that day. Firstly, when I walked in I met my colleague Nick who worked in the Service Improvement Team in the health board. He had helped design the mass vaccination centre and was there checking it was all running smoothly.
The second thing was just the feeling of tearful relief when I got back into my car after being vaccinated and suddenly feeling like I had some protection at last from this awful thing that had been threatening me for so long. I have such a strong memory of that emotional response, but I didn't mention it in my blog post at the time.
That year there was a weird anti-lockdown party in the Senedd Election. Blog post: Senedd 2021 Election Leaflets Review & Ranking
I had a surprise when I cleaned out the detritus from my car. Blog post: Mundane markers of pandemic life
In June 2021 we went to the cinema for the first time since before lockdown. We saw In The Heights.
And in July 2021 I was able to go to my first football match since early March 2020. Blog post: Back to football after 16 months away
I posted several review posts of 2021 at the end of the year. One of them was all about the pandemic. Blog post: Reflecting on 2021 – the second year of the pandemic
In early 2022, I wrote about how Covid-19 was a good example of how sincerely held beliefs - however strongly they are held - are no protection against reality. This is a lesson that has become ever more apparent politically since I blogged about it. Blog post: The boat of belief and the rocks of reality
I also noted how the pandemic had left it's mark when I took part in the Keep Grangetown Tidy litter pick in January 2022.
In May 2022 I caught Covid-19 for the first time. I was due to start my new job and had to spend the first week of it attending virtual meetings and apologising to people. It was a key part of my blog post review of the month that month.
In September 2022 I had my fourth covid vaccination and was very pleased to finally get a sticker! (Cathy got one the very first time she got vaccinated.)
And in October 2022, we went to our first gig since before the pandemic - a postponed Counting Crows gig in Manchester
Covid was still around in 2023. I caught it again in March, as mentioned in that month's round up post. (And yes, I might have caught it off a giant rabbit!)
Happily, I have managed to stay free of the virus since then.
I hoped that after the pandemic settled down the world might be a more reflective and kinder place. Sadly, that hasn't happened. We have had two years of war in Ukraine now, and a year and a half of atrocities in Gaza. The USA seems to be spinning apart, headed up by a destructive narcissist. It seems like the chaos caused by covid wasn't enough and some people just want more.
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