LAST Sunday, I was preparing for my telephone consultation with Beatson oncologist Dr Brian Clark. On the back of a good scan result I was feeling fairly positive about things.
Despite everything – Covid-19, cancer and isolation – I had been given a glimpse of some hope that the treatments over recent months have been working. Now I had the choice to reduce the amount of chemotherapy and so cut down the real risk of infection from the virus or any other dangerous infection.
I’d been told that clinical trials had shown additional chemo at this stage would deliver only marginal benefits but I’d already decided to grasp every margin possible and address the heightened risk of infection with continued extreme shielding measures.
I was advised that a study in the US had shown that patients on chemotherapy who contract coronavirus are twice as likely to die as those who are not on chemo.
Armed with this, I still decided to opt for combined treatment chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatment, and shield as if my life depended on it – as it does.
That was when Nicola Sturgeon announced that those who are shielding must continue to shield until at least July 31.
A tearful young woman talked on TV of her despair at the prospect of another month of domestic incarceration. The first 10 weeks have been tough enough and this extension was just overwhelming. But I wonder how many of the 60,000 Scots who are shielding would really feel confident of dropping their guard?
I know I wouldn’t. I know the odds of being infected with coronavirus are reducing steadily (for the time being) but the odds are still there and the consequences are as severe as they can be. This isn’t the same as picking a horse at Royal Ascot and hoping for the best.
This lockdown for those most at risk is already a marathon – and there’s a lot of miles left on the road ahead. For most of us our health condition is a marathon running parallel to Covid with an increasingly obvious new dimension of mental health fatigue that must be putting a heavy load on those closest to us.
That’s why we all need to grab every grain of positivity and good news with both hands and embrace the uplifting, celebrate the good that happens, and enjoy every moment to the fullest that we possibly can.
Difficult, then, when all around us are headlines of protest and disruption over some ugly truths that haunt our society regarding racism. Difficult, then, as thousands of people face redundancy and our communities face years of financial depression.
So, it is with unqualified joy that I can today share with you that my youngest son and his wife are having a baby. Some clouds have a silver lining – and I just found one.
Ally McLaws is managing director of the McLaws Consultancy, specialist in business marketing and reputation management. See www.mclawsconsultancy.com
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