Day 3

Yesterday (Tuesday) was terrible, I had a horrific headache and spent most of the day in bed.

Added to that all I could think about was Peter. His memorial service began at 11am after an "immediate family only" funeral service and burial, and I was so, so upset that I couldn't go. I felt as if I'd let him down, and as Peter was a prominent member of the local community and a District Councillor, it felt unfair that half of the town would be going (half of whom probably didn't even know him well) and I was stuck in bed even though I worked for him for the past nine years!

Even though I'm not really religious, I said a few prayers for him at 11am and said goodbye in my own way. One of the nicest things was that the rain stopped at 10:55am and again at 11:25am (when the family would have been leaving the Church). I had to smile... if anyone could have made the rain stop for the occasion it was Peter!! The rain then held off and the sun hazily broke through the cloud a while later and I thought that he must be being interred at that moment... and I learnt later that he was!! All sounds terribly twee I know, but I swear it honestly happened!

I crawled back onto the sofa at lunchtime and saw my neighbour Debbie leaving for the memorial service (she knew Peter through her work) and I really wanted to bang on the window and beg her to take me with her... but of course I didn't. I knew that I wasn't allowed to go, and although the realisation pained me, I also knew that I didn't feel well enough to go. So I had a few more tears, text my dear friend Lisa in Malta (miss her so much), and slept.

I woke up an hour or so later feeling refreshed from a heavy sleep and decided that I would drag myself up and attempt to tidy my bombsite of a kitchen. Although I'm quite a messy person - particularly leaving piles of newspapers and magazines in the lounge until I have a tidy-up on a Saturday morning - I do like to keep a clean and tidy kitchen, especially as I have my beloved Gizmo, my beautiful house cat. I'm always spraying everywhere with the Dettol antibac spray! I had a new kitchen fitted last October and I love it. Everything has it's place and I am quite particular about keeping it looking perfect as much as I can during the week until I have my Saturday morning deep-clean... aargh I'm waffling...!

Basically the kitchen was a big mess. Used mugs, glasses and cereal bowls littered the worktop next to the sink and were also stacked up in the washing-up bowl, half immersed in cold water from when I'd hurriedly rinsed everything and left it. There were bread crumbs all over the other worktop, I'd left the cereal box out, bread out, toaster out, microwave door open, Saturday evening's washing was still in the machine, soaking wet and probably going mouldy... I had never seen it in such a mess. It was as though a veil had been lifted and I was seeing the devastation for the first time... and I became aware of how ill I must have been feeling to have not seen it before nor cared!

So I started to prepare to wash up. Even before the hot water had filled the bowl, I was exhausted. My arms felt as if they had ten ton weights attached. Then, as I started to wash, it came over me. I couldn't breathe. It felt as if someone was sitting on my chest and I couldn't get a deep breath. The more I tried, the worse I felt and it really hurt my lungs.

Immediately I thought "complications!!" and was convinced that the dreaded pneumonia had struck. Sweating, I walked back into the sitting room and was further alarmed when it felt worse when I started to move. I rang my GP surgery with shaking hands and asked if my doctor could call me back. No, explained the receptionist. He could not. Swine flu telephone surgery is mornings only and in any case my GP was off that day. I asked if another doctor could call me and after a lot of huffing and puffing she said she'd see if he could.

About half an hour later the doctor rang and I almost cried down the phone as I explained the symptoms. He asked me if I could meet him in the swine flu surgery at 5:30pm so that he could check me over. (The swine flu surgery is held in a building in the surgery car park normally used for routine clinics but which is now exclusively for swine flu so that "well" surgery users wouldn't come into contact with the flu patients)

Privately this worried me more than anything. I thought that he would reassure me over the phone but I had to go to the surgery. Everyone knows that if you have swine flu you should stay home - crikey you even get diagnosed over the phone! Why did I have to go to the clinic? Did he think I was really ill too? For the next 45 minutes I was a bit crazy to be honest. I packed my big black handbag with random items - iPod, Dawn French autobiography, tablets, mint humbugs (?!)... I scooped up a protesting Gizmo and breathed in his fur that smelt faintly of washing powder (he had evidently been sleeping on the ironing pile again :/) and said goodbye. I rang my mum - no answer. I left a breezy "I'll call you back later" message but told her that I loved her at the end. I unplugged the air-freshener. I made the bed.

I went to the surgery and was met by a practice doctor. He asked me all kinds of questions about how I had been feeling and listened to my chest and back. He said he couldn't hear anything untoward and ruled out anything nasty (PHEW!!). At this point I began to feel extremely foolish, but he said it was normal to have such symptoms with any kind of Flu, and it simply told him that I'd been doing too much too soon. He also said that it was a very clear indication that I definitely did have swine flu as opposed to being a "maybe but we'll treat it as if it is". He listened very patiently as I manically told him about how I was so upset by the mugs, toaster, mess, wanting to hoover the house, being lonely, missing Peter's memorial... and finally he told me very kindly not to be so hard on myself, to ask others for help, importantly to REST and stop worrying and let my body recover in it's own time. He said that the Tamiflu should start to kick in over the next day or so and that I should feel much better at the weekend. Before I left he made me promise to go straight home and not to go and buy cream cakes (ha!). He was too kind really, considering I was a silly hysterical lurgy infected person and he had to disinfect the door handles after me...

Leaving the surgery I still felt ill, but also incredibly uplifted, and stood in the rain for a moment on purpose while hunting for my car keys in my giant hastily filled handbag. Then I remembered I'd put them in my coat pocket in my state of panic (durrr... looked up to see the Dr standing there looking at me... cringe!).

I was going home to my Gizmo cat, to my messy kitchen. My settee bed. Home. No ambulance. No hospital. No heart breaking goodbyes. At that moment I vowed never to take good health for granted again. It's too precious.