IT’S day 21 of my isolation. I started earlier than most because lung cancer makes me hugely more vulnerable to infection, and early warnings of the coronavirus threat landed with more impact to those in my position.
I have crossed the front door of my suburban house just once since March 15 – and that was to attend hospital for chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatment.
On Tuesday, I will venture out again for the second of my three-week interval treatments. It’s going to be a bit scarier this time to leave the safety of my isolation.
Things have changed a lot across the UK in the past week. What we’ve been seeing in Italy and Spain and, more recently in New York, is unfolding right on our own doorstep. We knew it would, but still the realisation that this is happening here is really quite mind-numbing.
Only a couple of weeks ago there were positive things we felt able to grasp at. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Cabinet team were resolute and confident when they spoke of preparation, of learning from other countries and of “getting through this” with a unity of spirit and co-operation.
It was perhaps too easy then to be too confident that we’d get off lightly compared to others. It is perhaps too easy now to become too worried that everything is teetering on the edge of collapse.
Even the BBC headlines can’t help themselves from being tabloid. The subject matter is more akin to a science-fiction movie than a mainstream news bulletin.
Infection rates soaring and death rates alarmingly high; millions of jobs lost as companies shut down; health systems on the verge of collapse; body removals on an industrial scale from New York hospitals; heavily armed vigilante groups in the US prepare for a breakdown in law and order.
The tremors of fear infiltrating our every sense can seem very tangible – but we have almost certainly gone too hastily from glass half-full to glass almost empty.
I know there are few things any of us have gone through that can directly compare to what is happening right now.
But with so much time to ponder and muse – and worry and reflect – I can’t help but think I’ve been in the blackest of holes before only to realise some time later that things weren’t as bleak as I had thought they were.
This time last year I quit my job as director of communications with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde after falling victim to a cruel and costly financial scam that saw me losing my life savings. (I have never before revealed this to anyone except to six of my closest family and friends, such were my feelings of devastation and stupidity at being conned).
My plan was to launch my own business and work like crazy to recoup what I had lost, but there was a bend in the river I never saw coming – and that was being diagnosed with lung cancer two months after launching the business and just as I started to secure contracts.
I also remember many years ago scribbling on a bit of paper just how wealthy I’d be by the time I was 60 and my endowment mortgage matured. And I remember once planning for a life of retirement on a sun-kissed part of the Mediterranean with my then wife.
Then there was the time I calculated the future eye-watering value of my shares portfolio including a windfall pile I bought as part of an employee buyout of The Herald newspaper media group.
But there were unexpected bends in all those rivers too – the worldwide stock-market crash; a divorce; the endowments bubble bursting.
However, the absence of those dreams becoming reality simply didn’t dampen the years of fun and joy that happened in the interim.
And when I was made redundant from the job I loved in newspapers, I discovered a new challenging career leading NHS communications for 18 years.
After my divorce I found happiness with the woman I married – my childhood sweetheart from Primary 1 at Thornliebank Primary School – and with whom I am in love with today.
My pension lump sum on leaving the NHS sorted out my financial woes and, in hindsight, the cancer would have happened last year no matter what career decision I made.
Like everyone else, I’m worried about Covid-19 and how it might affect the people I love (and my own chances of surviving through my cancer treatment). But if this current black hole is anything like all the others there remains something to hope for round the next bend.
Ally McLaws is founder and MD of the McLaws Consultancy, a specialist in reputation enhancement and protection.
Among his clients is the UK’s influential Association of British Credit Unions where he operates as its external strategic adviser.
www.mclawsconsultancy.com
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