Lockdown

We are in unprecedented times.

Five days after I wrote a post on the outbreak of coronavirus, Covid-19, I don't think I anticipated how quickly and how ferociously everything would just stop. And it's absolutely horrible.

Schools are closed, restaurants are closed, offices are closed and everyone is working from home, apart from us in the NHS. I am quite thankful for this, as I'm not sure my mind could cope with the genuine isolation for weeks on end so keeping some semblance of routine has become a god send.

But that is it. Everything is cancelled, from football and indeed all sport to the Bedford River Festival, from theatre shows to Eurovision, everything is off. My calendar, once full of rugby and football fixtures, waiting for the influx of cricket fixtures is as empty as the hospital I'm sitting in, and quite frankly, I'm terrified of the affects of zero social interaction whatsoever will have on my once fragile mind.

Wait, I said the hospital was empty? During a pandemic? That's right. I work on Paediatrics at my local hospital and initial fears that the whole child population and literally their Mothers would appear, no one has. It seems people are too scared to go to hospital unless absolutely necessary, but despite social distancing measures and even talk of a complete lockdown, one fears this is the very definition of 'calm before the storm.'

The last 36 hours or so have been personally quite scary. I have developed mild chest pains leading to a shortness of breath, one of the symptoms to look out for when it comes to this respiratory illness that's sweeping the lands; and I had begun to panic that I had come to work and infected an entire department.

I spent the majority of this morning in the ghost town that is Accident & Emergency, being hooked up to every machine under the sun to come to the conclusion that there is nothing physically wrong with me and I am in fact suffering from quite acute anxiety about the whole thing.

As I mentioned in my last post, my anxiety doesn't come from the pandemic itself, but the effects of it. I'm not sure how I can cope without football, without cricket, without sport or bars or nights out or EUROVISION. The idea of all work and no play has been a perennial fear of mine for as long as I can remember and I'm about to be forced into it.

Things are going to get worse before they get better...