If three chords and the truth are required, I have only the truth. This pandemic keeps poking me in the ribs.
Today, Scotland recorded a spike - 21 new cases. The highest in a month. As regards the rest of the world, often I can't bear to look.
But there's still such a taboo in society about saying - Hey, I'm feeling bleak and pessimistic and fearful. People wince. People try to cheer you up. People think, focus on the positive, god dammit.
Sometimes I am those people. I often feel a duty to try to lift other people's spirits. I also feel a duty to listen to others, without trying to change their mood or their point of view.
Tonight, Matthew, I am captain of the Bad Ship Melancholy.
On the surface, Tess appears to be better, but she is still greatly curtailed by her throat/cough/ breathing issues. As I said in previous posts, I suspect it is a lesser-known, chronic condition called Vocal Chord Dysfunction. It's the opposite of a barrel of laughs.
I am still chasing up her NHS consultant. He has ordered more tests. Lung function tests. We still have to wait weeks and months. I asked him, could it be Covid? His reply? You can't say 100% about anything, but this 100% isn't Covid.
But how would we know? It appears anti bodies (and immunity!) can disappear after 3 months.
This feels so hard. To have a child with a chronic cough/breathing disorder in the middle of a pandemic. To know that we all have to be vigilant for the foreseeable future. And even vigilance is not fool proof. Yes, you sensible people know that.
Most nights, I drift off to sleep with Radio 4 playing the Shipping Forecast and 'Sailing By' - a saccharine Blackpool-esque waltz. When I'm done imagining a moustachio man in a tuxedo playing a garish organ, I imagine our bed is a raft, floating out in a huge, dark sea, under a paper moon.
I tell myself -there is nothing more I need to do until morning comes again. Nothing more but sleep. It might be the best moment of the day.
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