On 12 May 2015, four days before my 71st birthday, I was called in by my doctor. Here is what I blogged at the time:
Yesterday morning I went to the Derby Road Health Centre and left knowing that a chest x-ray on 8 May had shown 'established lung fibrosis'. The enormity of the news became clear within hours. Whilst I now wait my first appointment at the QMC and tests that will tell me what kind of lung fibrosis I have and how advanced it is, the web has already told me and Susan some things. Most importantly, there is no known treatment, that it will get progressively worse and that average life expectancy after diagnosis is three years... read more...
In the event I went to the City Hospital Lung Assessment Unit five days later, where they picked up that I also had a heart problem, so I ended up having two scans, one of which led to open heart surgery in February 2017. By August 2015 I was diagnosed with 'Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis' (see NHS website). Back then, as I wrote at the time, the average life expectancy following diagnosis was '3 years'. Visiting the NHS website again for the first time since then things have changed and the NHS is more optimistic about the prognosis.
To date I have had no symptoms that I haven't been able to manage and I refuse to be defined by my condition excepting that I haven't been to the theatre or cinema since my diagnosis. I also avoid meetings and know from personal experience what can happen if I allow my vanity to get the better of me — on the two occasions it has I have been ill enough to need antibiotics for a month. Worst of all I have to avoid public transport during the 'flu season and for a bus lover like me this is the hardest thing of all.
There are different types of pulmonary fibrosis and mine includes the word 'idiopathic' because its cause is unknown. I've never smoked or, to the best of my knowledge, worked in conditions where there were lots of particles floating about, except for my first job from 1959 until 1963. I mention this because a BBC News report says people like me are about to be joined by some of those recovering from Coronavirus. I will call it Covid-19 Pulmonary Fibrosis. Anyone going in search of what this means may well see the condition as terminal and it is but there are good grounds for staying positive. I have another blog, the 2minuteclub, in which I write about living with PF and what you can do.
Living in Nottingham we are lucky to have one of the major centres for respiratory disease care and research, thanks, I'm sad to say, to coal mining (the other centres are Sheffield and London). My last blog was in March, just after I got an email from Nottingham City Care, who provide 7 day home support (a service I have yet to use but they stay in touch) for people with a lung condition. As a result I have been in self-isolation with Susan since 12 March 2020, which will be 15 weeks come tomorrow. You can probably understand now why I fall into the 'clinically extremely vulnerable' category and have been 'shielding'.
Today I went out in the car on my own for the first in months (Susan usually drives) to collect a prescription from the pharmacy I use (when did we stop calling them 'chemists'?) despite the fact that it is just a 2 minute walk door-to-door. The problem is that, apart from a few yards, the walk is along a narrow footpath, so we have been driving there instead.
I have seen good neighbours at a distance during the 15 weeks, who have been shopping for us. Hallam's on the High Road and Life Essentials on Wollaton Road close to the Nat West Bank have been fantastic delivering stuff we need. Sainsburys took until 3 weeks ago to accept an order, despite the supermarket's corporate management claiming that folk like us were a priority.
Today I received a letter about what folk like Susan and me need to continue doing and what we can do differently signed by 'Matt' (Hancock) and a 'Robert Jenrick'. If Matt did come to our house we'd invite him to the garden for a cup of tea and one of my homemade current buns. He's the only Government minister I feel remotely sorry for. He's clearly been set up to be the fall guy. He has managed a shambles, for that is what it has been, to the best of his ability, given that the rest of the Government has been determined to turn the epidemic to its advantage. I am in no doubt that the NHS will be as good as dismantled come the 2024 general election and my generation will have played a large part in bringing it about by giving their votes to the Conservatives. See this link. Here is a table from the YouGov analysis the links to:
I am in the 70+ Group and among 75 and overs (I'm 76) where the Labour vote falls to c.10%. I look at fellow oldies and want to shout 'selfish bloody morons' knowing that 67% of them voted Conservative! The point of all this is that we are stuck with the Conservatives and I will consider myself very lucky if I get to vote in another general election. I will be 80 if I do.
When I was a Young Socialist back in my teens older people would laugh and say 'You'll grow out of it' and the YouGov chart above shows they were right.
I doubt if the Coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic will teach us anything. Workers across a wide range of activities, as well as the NHS, deserve to be recognised in their pay-packets and we should feel free to spend on public services because the money exists. Austerity was a lie sold to us by the last Labour government and their successors, remembering that Liberals were enthusiastic partners with Conservatives in continuing what Labour started and they will all sell us the same lie again. It will be Labour's big test. Keir Starmer will have to choose sides. Get it wrong and the Party will split again. I seemed to have spent my political life, which began when I joined the YS in 1960 fighting cuts, rejoicing when the tide turned, as it occasionally has.
If the Conservatives look like losing their majority come near the next general election in 2024, they will happily cut Scotland adrift, so Labour will have no allies in the next Parliament. If I was in Scotland I would have voted for independence last time and would do so again. The Labour Party as we know it is past its sell-by date — which is why I support the English Labour Network and their analysis of the Party's future. I will end with this quote from their website. Ponder it. I just hope you recognise the truth when you see it:
The English Labour Network’s response to the Labour Together report into the party’s 2019 election defeat
Posted by The English Labour Network welcomes the publication of the Labour Together report on Labour’s defeat at the 2019 General Election, and the inclusion of our submission as an annex. The report rightly identified failures including an abject party leadership presiding over an incoherent Brexit position and a manifesto lacking credibility, while noting Labour’s long term decline in support in towns, from older voters and from people who left education aged 16.
Yet there are some significant omissions in the report, most notably the failure to critically examine the political challenges faced in England and voters who identify clearly as English. The English Labour Network submitted detailed evidence showing how Labour’s defeat and the Tory vote surge took place almost entirely amongst voters who identified as more English than British. Yet the 152 page report makes no acknowledgement of the struggles Labour is having with this group.
These issues should not have been brushed under the carpet. Labour has failed to engage with English identity since devolution to Scotland and Wales, leaving the space to be filled by the right, and has paid the electoral price.
Labour’s response must to be to engage with English people, English identity and English political issues. We should start by saying ‘England’ when we mean England, by delivering an English Manifesto at the next election to sit alongside the Welsh and Scottish manifestos, and by developing a new plan for the governance of England – the most centralised nation in Europe.
