Now that we are into the .....................

Public Archive
1

silly season!! How are people coping with the fact that we are heading into winter and the season of coughs and colds is upon us?

I woke up this morning and realised at 5.30am that hubby was still in bed and should have been long gone for work at 4.00am!! I woke him up and he said he had woken at 3.00am felt terrible and decided that he wasn’t going into work. All well and good but he’s a school site supervisor (posh acronym for school caretaker!!) so I had to call his head teacher at 5.45am and let her know. She then rang at 7.00am and asked was he on his way in? Erm!! no!! did you not get the message left on your house phone? Profuse apologies all round - and she’s going in pronto to open up. He has been working extra hours because the only other cleaner has been off sick since May and has been cleaning the school etc on his own more or less since then with occasional help from contract cleaners.

Now I realise that he is probably run down because his days are really long because of split shifts as well as having to do a lot for me over the past few months since my operation. But I was annoyed at him because he had’nt told me so that I could minimise contact between us and could haved moved into one of the spare bedrooms rather than be close contact overnight for whatever fluey type bug he has got.

I’m due for my next chemo a week today and am now living in fear of getting what he’s got but hoping that if I do get it - that it’s soon so I can get over it. Because much as I dread getting any kind of infection while on chemo nor do I want my chemo to be put back. It was put back by a week at the start because i was still attached to a vacuum machine for a compromised tummy wound - I want to get the 18 weeks over as soon as without delaying anything. Unrealistic I think - but I’m being irrational and ridiculous today!!

Much as I’m sympathetic for my husband I am also mightily cheesed off!! Sorry!! Rant over!! and breathe…

 

2

Hi Swampy1901 - you have my sympathy. There is unfortunately a lot of it about this time of year, and unless you want to live like a hermit it is difficult to avoid contact with people who have got some lurgy or other. Several of our friends and neighbours have had bad colds with runny noses and coughs which have taken two or three weeks to shift. And every time I have been to the doctor’s there have been people coughing and sniffing, plus queues of people wanting flu jabs which we can’t have (I started my chemo the beginning of September, so it wasn’t possible to have one in advance). They do their best to move me away from other patients, but there isn’t a lot of space in the waiting rooms, so complete isolation isn’t possible. There is even less space in the main waiting room since they had water leak through the ceiling a few weeks ago, and have had to partition some of it off! My husband also went down with a cold a few weeks ago (blames one of our friends for passing it on) but nothing like as bad as what yours has got and he seems to have shaken it off now. We have been sleeping in separate rooms from the start of my treatment to reduce risks of cross infection, but since last Tuesday I have had a dry cough and runny nose which he thinks he has passed on to me. I am not so sure, as I could easily have picked it up at the doctor’s or out shopping. So even if you do take sensible precautions it isn’t easy to avoid germs because they’re out there in the community and you could pick them up anywhere. I hope you manage to avoid catching anything nevertheless, and that your husband recovers soon.