Lock down experience by David & Paula Williams. Dave was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer in June 2018.
Here’s his story from the doorstep,
I was half way through my Radiotherapy treatment when I received a letter telling me I was classed as EXTREMELY CLINICALLY VULNERABLE due to CORONA VIRUS and should stay at home for 12 weeks or until I was told it was OK to go out again. I finished my treatment on 7th April 2020.
This enforced stay at home led to a few changes in the way we lived. I say we because when this letter arrived my wife decided that she would also stay at home because she was worried that if she went out, she might bring something back that would be detrimental to me.
My prescriptions were phoned through to the Pharmacy and collected by our son and daughter in law.
Papers were delivered to the house and paid by bank transfer.
Initially we found it difficult to get a slot on the supermarket website with my wife staying up to midnight on quite a few occasions with no success so we were thankful that our local butcher did deliveries of meat and fruit and veg. Our son and daughter in law also did some shopping for us. After some time we registered on the GOV.UK website and were given a free weekly supply of food (which we were very grateful for) but also we then had preference to delivery slots on the supermarket website, so we stopped the free food deliveries and shopping was done online, delivered to our doorstep and thoroughly wiped down before being packed away.
As vineyards were classed as essential occupations, we were allowed to travel down to the vineyard to carry on our work there.
Exercise was working down on the vineyard (2.5 miles away) and social distancing was achieved in 8.5 acres of land with beautiful views of the river Tamar.
GOOD NEWS.
On 19th May I had a telephone consultation with the Oncology department of Derriford Hospital the result of which I was told my PSA score was 0.03. We enjoyed our glass of wine that evening. Some things were a little different during this time. My last bloods for PSA were taken in the surgery car park with me sat in the driver’s seat of our car with the driver’s door open and a nurse in full PPE in attendance.
My last Hormone injection was given by a nurse in full PPE in our garage, me standing there with my trousers around my knees. What fond memories!
Overall I think it has been OK for us although we still have 3 more weeks to go until “Shielding” is paused. In the last two weeks we have started going for walks around the village but even when we get to the end of July I believe that we will still be cautious about going out and about.
I can see from people’s attitudes since the easing of lock down that this virus is going to be with us for some time yet and as such will still curtail many activities that we as a family have in mind.
We will just soldier on!
