Despite the fact Lizzie was diagnosed with Covid a few days ago, her symptoms haven’t seemed… too bad.
What might appear even more extraordinary about that, is she just had her fourth round of chemo a few days before her Covid diagnosis.
Lizzie has chemo every three weeks, for her Stage 3C ovarian cancer. The routine is always the same. She goes to the hospital (the BMI Priory in Birmingham), where various medical types attach a tube to the ‘port’ in Lizzie’s chest (a plastic hole in the skin, which was put there for that very purpose – in another not-very-nice operation Lizzie had to undergo). They then start pumping Lizzie full of chemo medicine. Chemo ‘poison’ is actually Lizzie’s word for it… as she’s pointed out chemo medicine is a sort of poison… which kills the cancer cells, but also does a fair bit of collateral damage to the human body along the way (including causing all of the patient’s hair to fall out, of course).
When Lizzie gets back from the hospital after each chemo, she’s white. Not just white like a white person in a black-and-white photo… or a goth character in a Tim Burton movie. White like somebody who’s had all the blood sucked out of them by a vampire and who is now completely desiccated. (Come to think of it, that could be a character in a Tim Burton movie).
Despite her whiteness, however, after each chemo Lizzie always seems surprisingly full of beans. The chemo was hard… but, according to Lizzie, she feels OK now! Yeah!
That’s the steroids talking. Lizzie gets pumped full of the things too, in each chemo. And whilst the steroids don’t give Lizzie the energy, say, to win the Tour De France… they certainly give her enough juice to lead a normalish sort of life, for a couple of days after her return from hospital.
But what goes up, must come down… and Lizzie’s downer, after the steroids from each chemo run out, is monumental. The week which follows her downer is always the hardest. This is the period when the poison is still working itself through her system… and when Lizzie (without the effects of the steroids to pep her up) feels sickest and at her most vulnerable and despairing. It’s these weeks when Lizzie seriously begins to question whether she’s going to survive any of this at all.
Those weeks really are fucking awful… of course, mostly for Lizzie (she’s the one going through it all). But me and the kids and the rest of Lizzie’s family have come to dread them too.
So… as I said at the top of this section… despite the fact Lizzie was diagnosed with Covid a few days ago, her symptoms haven’t seemed too bad.
Until today.
It suddenly becomes a hundred percent clear, that it’s Lizzie’s steroids which have kept her going through the onset of Covid… just as they’ve kept her going through the onset of the latest chemo.
But now the steroids have run out, and Lizzie is crashing down big time.
The post steroid comedowns are usually, as I said, fucking awful. This one – with Lizzie getting a double whammy of chemo AND Covid – is really off the scale. It’s hard to believe we were joking, a few days ago… grimly laughing about Lizzie’s awful bad luck to get the Covid diagnosis, with everything else which is going on. No-one’s laughing now. Lizzie just looks so ill and helpless and she keeps on saying she really doesn’t think she’s going to make it this time.
I feel so sorry for her. That’s what I keep on saying to Lizzie’s Mum and sisters when I speak to them on the phone. ‘I feel so sorry for her.’ It sounds so lame, but it’s honestly how I feel.
Why couldn’t I have got the Covid? It’s just… so unfair. Lizzie’s hardly been out for the last few months… but the one time she has been, she gets this awful virus. I’ve been out plenty… and I’ve been sharing a bedroom with Lizzie, all this time she’s (unknowingly) had Covid. And I still haven’t had it. Unfair. And weird.
P. D. Clifton 
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