We’re OK so far, have been carrying on as normally as possible but schools finish tomorrow so it will all be very strange after that! Everything has been being cancelled this week - Girl Guides, dance classes, hospital appointment which we were due to have tomorrow was changed to telephone appointment etc, so it's all feeling a bit sad at the moment. I cancelled the hospital appointment, they want all the pump data downloaded and I haven’t got a clue how to do that, plus it's meant to be daughter's annual review so if they can’t take bloods there's not much point, and I don’t want to keep her off what might be her last school day in goodness knows how long just for a phone call. Had the nurse on the phone tonight saying they have a little bit of flexibility this week and we can go into the hospital if we want, next week they are officially shutting the clinics down and it will be telephone contact only. So we've snapped up the chance of a last hospital check up, and she gave us a time a bit earlier than the one we should have had, so we can get back to school. Hopefully by the time the next one is due things might be calming down a bit.
What I’m finding hardest is the shopping situation, it gets more crazy by the day and toilet rolls are rarer than hens teeth - who the hell is hoarding them all, surely once you've got some buffer stock you only have to replace what you use?! The level of selfishness of some people is shocking and really sad. So what is usually at worst a bit of a bore has now become a nightmare, it makes me anxious each time I go out, partly because of how busy it might be and also because of how many bare shelves there may be. I'm changing tactics now, usually I plan meals and go out looking for a list of ingredients, now I think it will be a case of concentrate on what i can find and see what we can make with it. And also by touring little local shops every few days I might be able to find things which i couldn't get in the big supermarkets (eggs and flour today, yay!). By slowly buying a few extra things each time i shop we have now got enough stock of things to last 2-3 weeks if we have to isolate ourselves so as long as I can keep things topped up we should be OK. We don’t need to completely isolate ourselves at the moment but once the schools are closed we will be almost doing so anyway because there won't be anywhere else to go other than food shopping!
My daughter’s school is intending to keep her busy via Google classroom, she can log on and get work to do and can message the teachers if she needs help. They are expecting her to stick to her normal timetable, so e.g if she normally has science first lesson then log onto that part of Google classroom and see what work they have set her, even the food tech teacher is going to set practical tasks of things for them to make at home (assuming we can get the ingredients of course!). It's far more comprehensive than I was expecting, which is good, and daughter said when she's timetabled to have PE I can send her out on errands - with a list of things we need and she'll walk to some of the local shops, bless her!
I hate all of this and sometimes just want to cry, but then have to give myself a very stern talking to - we're all in the same position, nobody else is exactly enjoying it either, I know some people who are really worried about how they are going to manage financially through all this and others who have far more serious health problems than we do which makes them a lot more vulnerable, so really we are lucky and I need to get a grip and get on with it. That's how I’m keeping myself going at the moment.
Stay safe people, and hopefully before we know it we'll be coming out the other side 🙂