My father received a standard letter about isolating for 12 weeks today. I've been googling to see if there is a copy of this online anywhere, so that I can read it, but all I can find is references to it, not the actual text.
Dad is in the extremely vulnerable group, as he has myeloma. I'm not querying whether they should have got a letter.
However, from what they're telling me, the letter they've received makes little sense. Mum says that it says she has to take Dad's temperature every day, whilst simultaneously standing six feet away from him. (Of course, it might not have occurred to them that Dad, despite being male, is perfectly capable of taking his own temperature) I'm not clear why Dad's temperature needs to be taken every day anyway, if he's feeling well. A daily temperature recording is just going to ramp up their anxiety levels, which are worryingly high as it is.
Plus they don't have the right thermometer at home and when Mum, doing what she thought the letter was telling her, headed for the pharmacy to buy the right sort of thermometer, she was told they were sold out. Mum hasn't been inside any form of a shop since before lockdown, and I'm not happy that she thought the letter was telling her to break her social isolation in order to get the right thermometer immediately. (The letter apparently says the temperature taking regime should start as soon as they got the letter.)
Plus, they think it might be saying that Dad's chemo might be stopped. He's not terminally ill, far from it, but obviously that is what will happen if his cancer treatment is discontinued. So you can imagine their anxiety and distress.
I've ordered a thermometer from Amazon which should be with them by Saturday, but I'd like to read the letter for myself.
The text is as CK's link. I would have to say we have not been following it to the letter (ha!) - we do not have separate bathrooms, nor yet bedrooms, and were I to leave Mr F as much to himself as it suggests, he'd probably starve.
He's also had another from our GP practice intimating that they'll phone up for a cosy chat about Resuscitate or not bother? prefer to die at home or in hospital? will up date? funeral pyre or ship burial?
@Firenze , what is this temperature taking regime? That's what I really want to understand, and I don't see that in CK's link.
Mum and Dad have had separate bedrooms for years, and can allocate a bathroom each easily enough, but the idea of Dad not eating at the table with Mum, but eating off a tray elsewhere is hideous.
My parents were both shielding, but Mum has broken that today because of this letter telling them that Dad has to start having his temperature taken daily with a type of thermometer they don't have.
I'm sure they've misunderstood something; I can't see that the government thinks that having the right thermometer and using it immediately is more important than shielding.
Yes of course, sorry, I should have seen that. I'm not sure what the answer is: the advice reads like it was written by someone who had studied human behaviour from a Peter and Jane book about sixty years ago.
ETA: in case it's not clear, that is an expression of mixed solidarity, bafflement and fury. People have to be challenged to come up with something more followable, more meaningful, more sensible than that. It's bland, patronising nonsense that pays no attention to the rest of the human person.
I suspect that your mother has read this paragraph from the link above:
If you think you have developed symptoms of COVID-19 such as a new, continuous cough or fever, seek clinical advice using the NHS 111 online coronavirus service or call NHS 111. Do this as soon as you get symptoms.
to mean you need to check your temperature daily.
I tend to just check our temperatures if feeling feverish, and as asthmatics with a peak flow meter at home we're checking our peak flow more often than usual. (I have been supposed to monitor mine daily for years, I've been better than I usually am.)
I said to Mum that surely a hand on a forehead is a good indicator of raised temperature, but Mum said the letter said Dad needed a daily temperature check with a proper thermometer.
I can understand that they've read It is possible that your hospital may need to cancel or postpone some clinics and appointments. You should contact your hospital or clinic to confirm appointments. as "we might stop your chemo" but the temperature taking thing seems very specific.
They have been rigorously shielding and well informed up to now, so this "I have to go into a pharmacy for the Right Thermometer" seems out of character.
We do have an oral thermometer (which I got, AIR, from medisupplies.co.uk, where I bulk buy my vinyl/nitrile gloves another useful item to have). The battery had run down, so we replaced that - but we've not been using it. Mr F's understanding was that it only needed to be deployed if he experienced any symptoms- eg to distinguish between a possible Covid cough and a shut up in an under-dusted house cough.
It's a letter addressed to all manner of conditions and levels of illness. Stable and in remission is a far cry from, say, immediate post SCT.
So, he doesn't leave the house save to the garden: anything coming into the house (shopping, post) gets a once over with a sterile wipe (also medisupplies) and we wash hands a lot. As sole contact, I go out as little as feasible with keeping us fed (social distancing, gloves). Other than that, we go on as normal.
I know this might sound daft (and possibly stating the bleedin' obvious), NEQ, but could you get your mum to just read the letter out to you next time you phone her, so that you can get the gist of it?
My mother just called to tell me she's got pulmonary edema, which she said eagerly is a known sign of congestive heart failure. Googling tells me it's also a known consequence of being overdue for dialysis, a much more likely reason given the weekend and then her dialysis unit's refusal to accept her yesterday due to a cough (likely edema related). So she's been to the plague-ridden hospital ER, received a negative COVID test, and is still being refused by the dialysis people, who want TWO negative tests. So she's yet undialyzed while the doctors feud. Her apparent desire to scare me may well come true the way things are shaping.
In other news, I myself have signs of possible
norovirus, oh yipee-kay-skippy. At least it got me off the phone and away from increasing prognostications of death.
Lamb Chopped I'm so paranoid aware of handwashing at the moment I got up from the computer and washed my hands when I read your post.
Be kind to yourself Lamb Chopped and do whatever you need to in order to stay healthy. It may sound selfish, but how can you serve others from a bed of sickness?
Thank you, folks. Good news for me at least--I apparently have a new food allergy, and NOT norovirus, for which God be thanked. Mr. Lamb fessed up to frying yesterday's dinner in sesame oil, and I've had a bad reaction to that before, so I think it's established. I'm starting to feel much better.
@Lamb Chopped , glad to hear that is one problem sorted. You sound like you need all your strength to cope with your mother. @North East Quine , my MiL got a shielding letter. The covering letter basically told her she had been identified as being in a high risk group, but to contact the surgery as normal if she needed help and it also gave the contact details of local help organisations. It referred to a leaflet that was included with the letter. I’ve not seen that, but looking at the information that @Curiosity killed linked to on the NHS website it seems unlikely it would be insisting on the use of a special thermometer. Getting your mother to read you the letter sounds a good idea. What does your dad say?
No more news from mum’s care home re Covid 19 so I assume she is safe. I’ve seen her on Facebook looking OK. Due to her poor eyesight and lack of comprehension and my poor hearing Skype/phones are not a good way to communicate. I’m just dropping off cards and ordering flowers and chocolates for her. My poorly brother is worried he’ll never see her again
Thanks everyone. I'm going to try to get Mum to read out the relevant bit of the letter today. They've already had one shielding letter, but just mentioned it in passing. As I knew that shielding letters were going out, I didn't ask about the first one.
Then yesterday I had Mum on the phone twice in dreadful state about the new letter they'd received.
Up to now I've been impressed about how well they were adapting and coping.
Mr F had second letter too, but didn't notice anything substantially different from the first, bar some contact numbers for specific contingencies.
They seem to be quite long and complicated documents, with a lot of 'if X then Y'. Your mother may have been upset by some instruction which does not actually apply to their situation.
@Lamb Chopped so pleased to hear your news. Leave the sesame to Ali Baba. (As a child I thought Sesame was a made up magic word. Even now I don't think I've come across it in physical form.)
@Lamb Chopped glad it's just sesame seed allergy - that's not uncommon. (That sort of problem means 3 times daily medication to be able to eat here, very expensive medication.)
Thank you, folks. That was a bit of a shocker! I've got to call my folks today or be a heartless daughter. Hoping to feel more up to it in a couple hours.
@neq, we Skyped some family yesterday. Three adults, but the grown up daughter is staying 2m away from her mum and dad for as much as is practicable for the 12 weeks - in fact she said getting close together for the Skype call was the closest they’d been for over a week. Her parents haven’t left the house but have gone in the garden, which is more than she has done.
I took part in an unexpected video call yesterday. My neice rang me, with her husband, and then my nephew and his wife joined in. It was lovely; the only problem was I was in the bath. I kept my phone very close to my face....
We're sliding into winter down in this half of the world, and AP - who now has creditors knocking at her metaphorical door in fury - has no heating. She can't handle firewood any more, and the house won't sustain more than one 2000/2400 watt (or amp or ohm or whatever they are) bar heater. If we mention heat-pumps (air-con) she goes ballistic as she doesn't understand how they work - can't see a red glow or hear a fan so they're not doing anything.
She doesn't open mail and then chucks it out for recycling - hence the angry creditors, including the accountant who has rescued her from a few issues this year but then not been paid himself. Nor sure how that happened. And she lost a letter from the British government that she was supposed to sign and return to tell them that she's still alive to receive the (considerable) pension she receives from them. "Oh never mind. I'll do it next year. They can ring me if they're worried."
I'm having repeated conversations with my APs to try to help them remember not to throw away the checks that Dear Leader (grrr, razzle-frazzle, steaming ears-his signature) will be sending them. This will be an every day occurrence in hopes of success.
I had a mostly decent conversation (for us) with my AP yesterday, but in the middle of it a reference was made to a painful personal episode in my life (NOT involving her), and she insisted on telling me that I had not had the feelings I said I had had at that point. She was very invested in telling me I had not had those feelings. *cue Twilight Zone theme*
Yes. I've had that before. But this--THIS was "you can't possibly have been upset about [MAJOR LIFE ISSUE NOT INVOLVING MOM] even though this was the absolute climax of the whole shitty cycle, and involved a life-threatening issue with regards to my child.
But I couldn't have been upset, because she says so.
{And this occurred as a subsidiary argument to whether I actually have severe asthma or not--she says I do, on the basis of this one episode, and I say (on my doctor's authority) that I do not, except for highly emotional situations and post viral periods. Heck, I don't even take maintenance medication, and have never been hospitalized. Why does she want me to have severe asthma, against all the evidence? IN A PANDEMIC?
And the fucky thing is, I didn't even notice this utterly absurd claim until the day after the conversation. Just had the usual sensation of suffocating.
I had a conversation with my mother a few months ago about something that had gone badly wrong for my parents when I was 20. It was my fault. I said that I had done what my mother told me to do and my mother was genuinely aghast. Apparently she had told me what she thought was the correct thing for a mother to say, but hadn't expected me to actually do it - she'd expected me to do the opposite, but then lie to her that I'd done what she said. Everything would have worked out fine, if I'd only had the sense to realise I was supposed to do the opposite of what I was told, and then lie.
She kept saying - but what I told you to do made no sense! why would you do that? Why would you think that just because I told you to do X, you should do X?
However, it is a measure of how much my relationship with my mother has improved in the last three years that we could even have that conversation. So there's that.
Comments
More details in the USA thread.
Continuing to remember those mentioned on this thread.
Tina, that’s good news.
Indeed. Especially at this time.
Can anyone provide me with a link?
Also there is confusion, someone I know who is on immunosuppressants has had their third letter. - Guardian story on confusion
However, from what they're telling me, the letter they've received makes little sense. Mum says that it says she has to take Dad's temperature every day, whilst simultaneously standing six feet away from him. (Of course, it might not have occurred to them that Dad, despite being male, is perfectly capable of taking his own temperature) I'm not clear why Dad's temperature needs to be taken every day anyway, if he's feeling well. A daily temperature recording is just going to ramp up their anxiety levels, which are worryingly high as it is.
Plus they don't have the right thermometer at home and when Mum, doing what she thought the letter was telling her, headed for the pharmacy to buy the right sort of thermometer, she was told they were sold out. Mum hasn't been inside any form of a shop since before lockdown, and I'm not happy that she thought the letter was telling her to break her social isolation in order to get the right thermometer immediately. (The letter apparently says the temperature taking regime should start as soon as they got the letter.)
Plus, they think it might be saying that Dad's chemo might be stopped. He's not terminally ill, far from it, but obviously that is what will happen if his cancer treatment is discontinued. So you can imagine their anxiety and distress.
I've ordered a thermometer from Amazon which should be with them by Saturday, but I'd like to read the letter for myself.
He's also had another from our GP practice intimating that they'll phone up for a cosy chat about Resuscitate or not bother? prefer to die at home or in hospital? will up date? funeral pyre or ship burial?
Mum and Dad have had separate bedrooms for years, and can allocate a bathroom each easily enough, but the idea of Dad not eating at the table with Mum, but eating off a tray elsewhere is hideous.
I'm sure they've misunderstood something; I can't see that the government thinks that having the right thermometer and using it immediately is more important than shielding.
ETA: in case it's not clear, that is an expression of mixed solidarity, bafflement and fury. People have to be challenged to come up with something more followable, more meaningful, more sensible than that. It's bland, patronising nonsense that pays no attention to the rest of the human person.
I tend to just check our temperatures if feeling feverish, and as asthmatics with a peak flow meter at home we're checking our peak flow more often than usual. (I have been supposed to monitor mine daily for years, I've been better than I usually am.)
I can understand that they've read It is possible that your hospital may need to cancel or postpone some clinics and appointments. You should contact your hospital or clinic to confirm appointments. as "we might stop your chemo" but the temperature taking thing seems very specific.
They have been rigorously shielding and well informed up to now, so this "I have to go into a pharmacy for the Right Thermometer" seems out of character.
It's a letter addressed to all manner of conditions and levels of illness. Stable and in remission is a far cry from, say, immediate post SCT.
So, he doesn't leave the house save to the garden: anything coming into the house (shopping, post) gets a once over with a sterile wipe (also medisupplies) and we wash hands a lot. As sole contact, I go out as little as feasible with keeping us fed (social distancing, gloves). Other than that, we go on as normal.
In other news, I myself have signs of possible
norovirus, oh yipee-kay-skippy. At least it got me off the phone and away from increasing prognostications of death.
Be kind to yourself Lamb Chopped and do whatever you need to in order to stay healthy. It may sound selfish, but how can you serve others from a bed of sickness?
No more news from mum’s care home re Covid 19 so I assume she is safe. I’ve seen her on Facebook looking OK. Due to her poor eyesight and lack of comprehension and my poor hearing Skype/phones are not a good way to communicate. I’m just dropping off cards and ordering flowers and chocolates for her. My poorly brother is worried he’ll never see her again
Then yesterday I had Mum on the phone twice in dreadful state about the new letter they'd received.
Up to now I've been impressed about how well they were adapting and coping.
They seem to be quite long and complicated documents, with a lot of 'if X then Y'. Your mother may have been upset by some instruction which does not actually apply to their situation.
* not that allergies aren't serious - of course they are - but at least they can be managed by avoidance tactics.
NEQ - let us know how you get on - prayers continuing!
She doesn't open mail and then chucks it out for recycling - hence the angry creditors, including the accountant who has rescued her from a few issues this year but then not been paid himself. Nor sure how that happened. And she lost a letter from the British government that she was supposed to sign and return to tell them that she's still alive to receive the (considerable) pension she receives from them. "Oh never mind. I'll do it next year. They can ring me if they're worried."
I'm having repeated conversations with my APs to try to help them remember not to throw away the checks that Dear Leader (grrr, razzle-frazzle, steaming ears-his signature) will be sending them. This will be an every day occurrence in hopes of success.
But I couldn't have been upset, because she says so.
{And this occurred as a subsidiary argument to whether I actually have severe asthma or not--she says I do, on the basis of this one episode, and I say (on my doctor's authority) that I do not, except for highly emotional situations and post viral periods. Heck, I don't even take maintenance medication, and have never been hospitalized. Why does she want me to have severe asthma, against all the evidence? IN A PANDEMIC?
And the fucky thing is, I didn't even notice this utterly absurd claim until the day after the conversation. Just had the usual sensation of suffocating.
People who want to be normal lack imagination.
She kept saying - but what I told you to do made no sense! why would you do that? Why would you think that just because I told you to do X, you should do X?
However, it is a measure of how much my relationship with my mother has improved in the last three years that we could even have that conversation. So there's that.