Coronavirus - how important is shielding? - some sobering thoughts from a very close friend of mine in these troubled times.

With so many people complaining about how long they may be in “shielding” for, I thought you may want to hear about my daughter who is very grateful to be safely locked away in “shielding” for as long as is necessary. She completes her 7th week today. “Day 49” of her count from when her Consultant ‘phoned her to explain the seriousness of her situation and shut her away with immediate effect. My daughter lives in a small flat. It has a lounge with a kitchen at one end, one bedroom, a bathroom, a cupboard and a small entrance hall. The lounge has patio doors out on to a small paved area but she can only rarely go out onto it because of the close proximity of people on the nearby footpath that runs beside the road which is just the other side of the hedge and fence. Her only window is in her bedroom. It has a small opening so she can get fresh air so that’s where she spends most of her days. The window and patio doors are on the north side of her building so she gets no direct sunshine through either. She only moved there shortly before Christmas 2019 so she doesn’t know her neighbours other than by sight. She is a single lady and she lives there alone. She is a professional ‘key worker’ who has come to terms with multiple illnesses and multiple disabilities and has necessarily changed her life, her lifestyle and her career path to accommodate her significantly reduced mobility. She is now a wheelchair user. She is a fully qualified nurse but she is currently working from home doing admin tasks for the dementia care home that she is now a member of the management team of. Yes, her lifestyle is incredibly lonely. It is frustrating. She feels so distanced from her work team who she feels she should actively be assisting through these troubled times. She feels the pain of losing her residents as they die from this awful virus without her being there to care for them and comfort them. She misses the camaraderie of her colleagues and the supportive banter of a workplace environment. She misses her friends. And she misses her family. No amount of video calls and exchanged messages and emails can compensate for the life she is no longer able to live. But she doesn’t moan. She doesn’t complain about her confinement in four small walls. She doesn’t say things about how awful it is to be forced into her current situation. She doesn’t gripe about her reliance on the choice of her food, her meals, being made by complete strangers who can provide only repetitive basics. She doesn’t blame anyone for not being able to get a delivery slot to be able to select, and have delivered, groceries, toiletries and household items of her choosing. She is grateful of every box of provisions that has arrived. She is thankful for the system that is keeping her supplied with a small selection of things to eat. She is creative with how she carefully combines and rations what she receives. There is acknowledgment in her words about what others are doing to ensure she doesn’t starve to death in her isolation. She welcomes the items with excitement and gratitude that someone cares enough to be supplying and boxing up the items for someone they don’t even know. For her. She misses the warmth of sunlight on her face and, as we video chat via our phones, I can’t help noticing that her skin colour is so pale now. She is like a fragile porcelain doll. Her flat is like a box on a locked-up toyshop’s shelf. Her patio doors and single window are similar to a doll’s box’s clear plastic front panels. People could see her in her box but the shop is shut so no one bothers to look in her direction. In silence, she sits on her bed and watches them pass by on the nearby footpath; occasionally overhearing their complaints through her small bedroom window that only opens enough to vent. As they pass, walking in the sunshine and chatting with a loved one, she hears them complain about only being allowed outside so few times each day. She sees them pass multiple times. Perhaps the first time they were going to ‘get medications’. Then maybe out to ‘do some ‘essential shopping’. Perhaps the next time they were out for their ‘daily exercise‘ time allowance. And then maybe ‘delivering something to a vulnerable relative’s doorstep‘. They come and they go past her window. Able to enjoy being out of their four walls but moaning about the restrictions which give them opportunity to do so. She is sad for them that they do not notice how fortunate they are. She has no such opportunities. Kind strangers collect her medications for her. Another made her a cake because they were bored and happened to share the start of her postcode. A bag with a colouring book and some bubble bath was delivered to her by someone else in her virtual postcode community. And an Easter egg came her way through the kindness of a stranger. She feels their love, and their support of an unseen stranger, through each of their kind and generous gestures. For every delivery, be it the gifted items, mail in her external mailbox or her food rations, there is an intense and essential procedure of timings, delays and cleansing that she must adhere to. Signage, on the exteriors of doors she can’t use, explains her predicament to others. She trusts her unknown neighbours not to take things left for her in communal areas of her block of flats and they do not let her down. She is grateful of their tolerance of the systems she has had to put in place and relieved that she has her few paving slabs outside her patio doors, at the edge of the communal exterior area, that things can be relocated to for her to eventually bring inside to be thoroughly washed and sanitised. She doesn’t complain that even a cauliflower she had received in one of her food boxes ended up tasting of a hint of the lavender body wash that she cleanses every item with. She was just so delighted to receive a real vegetable. I watch her open her boxes by video link. Her excitement is genuine and evident. A food box is a highlight of her week. It is an event in her otherwise uneventful existence. She has had so much taken away from her in her less than three decades because of her deteriorating health but had thought her life was more settled by her new living arrangements in a new area and new job in a new sector. Now that has been taken from her too. Yet she remains positive and upbeat. Yes, she longs to be outside again but, unlike so many people who are constantly asking questions that simply cannot currently be answered, and unlike people who are complaining about being on the government’s ‘1.5 million’ (now ‘1.8 million’) list of those who are extremely vulnerable and are having to do “shielding”, she is grateful and resolute in her compliance. Unlike so many others, she does not view the restrictions as punishments or as the result of a dictatorial leadership. The restrictions are saving her life. She knows it and she is grateful that someone realised such restrictions were necessary and that they put them in place to protect her. She doesn’t dispute that the lifestyle she currently has is not one she would choose in normal circumstances, but these are not normal circumstances. She doesn’t begrudge others the considerable freedom that they have in comparison with her life. She doesn’t feel any compulsion to call out to them to stop their moaning because they are so lucky as they frequently walk in the sunshine past her bedroom window. She doesn’t argue with those who are also on the government’s ‘extremely vulnerable’ list who are also restricted like her but who are campaigning not to be. The elderly, the unwell. She wishes that they could see that it is the steps that have been taken to keep them safe that are keeping them alive. Death is all around her; residents of her care home, colleagues and friends. These deaths are not just statistics, these deaths are names, characters, real people who she will never be with again. They didn’t have the opportunity to do the “shielding“ that she has been told to do. She knows it is the “shielding” that is keeping her alive. That’s why, and how, she endures it with such positivity. She doesn’t complain about her life. She doesn’t complain about being one of the country’s ‘extremely vulnerable’ citizens. She doesn’t complain about being on ‘the list’. She doesn’t complain about having every aspect of her life turned upside-down. She willingly complies with her unenviable confinement. And she will willingly continue to do so. For as long as the restrictions last. She has already endured her confinement in her small ‘cell’ for seven weeks. As it stands at the moment, her tally will be at least 119 days. That number is irrelevant though. She will do it for as long as it takes. It is not because she has nothing better to do. It is not because she enjoys the life she is living. It is because someone who doesn’t even know her wants her to live.

It is because she wants to live.

I hope this helps others who may not have considered their lives as one of the “shielded” population from this perspective.

A proud Mum