Being disabled in the third lockdown

This is the full transcript of Ouch – the cabin fever Isolation Diaries podcast as broadcast on 22nd January 2021 and presented by Kate Monaghan.

kate - Well hello, and welcome back to Isolation Diaries. It has been a little while hasn’t it? For those of you who are new to Isolation Diaries I’m Kate Monaghan, and this is basically my online diary. Back in March when the world stood still for the first time I carried my recording equipment around in my pocket to record my thoughts while I was shielding with my family. We were shielding because my wife, Holly, is the recipient of a kidney transplant, and so she’s on medication that basically stops her immune system. So she’s in the extremely clinically vulnerable category, which meant that we had to shield and follow the rules very, very strictly, and it wasn’t easy

So, if you’re a new listener, welcome along, it’s great to have you here, and if you stayed with me during series one, well you probably now know me better than some of my very best friends. The one thing that I always promise with this podcast is that I will be super honest, as a disabled wife and mum with EDS, which is Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a kind of chronic pain, joints thing. I’ve got endometriosis, I’ve got fibroids, I’ve got all sorts of stuff going on, including joyful mental health issues as well. So doing that all in lockdown is far from glamorous, as I’m sure you can imagine, but I always keep it real. In fact sometimes it gets a bit too real, which I’m not going to apologise for because I’m warning you about that now

Last time I spoke to you in the summer my family consisted of my wife, Holly, our daughter, Scout, and our four cats, Milo, Tiger, Felix and Ralphie. In fact you can hear Milo now having a lovely time on my lap, but that has now all changed.

[music]

KATE - Hey baby.

HOLLY - Okay.

KATE - Hi.

HOLLY - Hi. What are you doing?

KATE - Well, it’s back.

HOLLY - What’s back?

KATE - The podcast.

HOLLY - Yay! [laughter]

kate - Is that a real yay?

HOLLY - Yeah. Lockdown… Are we calling it lockdown two or lockdown three?

KATE - I think it’s lockdown three now because 2.0 was in November, although it was brief and not that difficult.

HOLLY - Yeah, I don’t feel like that was a really very… Yeah, not much of a thing. But no, since we last had the podcast we’ve… We’ve doubled the amount… Did you just…?

kate - I just farted, sorry. [laughter]

HOLLY - That’s really nice.

KATIE - Classic.

HOLLY - It is classic. We’ve doubled the amount of children we have. We’ve doubled the amount of people in this house. What else has changed?

KATE - Scout’s been at school.

HOLLY - Yeah, Scout started school, did a term and is now not at school. And…

KATE - Yeah. So, like, we need to explain all these things. Okay, so we’ve doubled our children, so we’ve adopted a beautiful daughter.

HOLLY - Yeah, so we’ve got two little girls now. Our youngest is… She’s 20 months.

KATE - Who we often refer to as Little G.

HOLLY - Yeah. Is she 21 months?

KATE - No, she’s 20 months. She’s two in April.

HOLLY - No, I think…

KATE - Yeah, so February, March… Yeah, so…

HOLLY - Okay, whatever. She’s 21 months.

KATE - She’s two in April.

HOLLY - Yeah.

KATE - And she’s beautiful and gorgeous and we’re all absolutely besotted with her I think, Scout included. Finally.

HOLLY - Finally. That’s another story.

KATE - Yeah. And your brother and his girlfriend moved in.

HOLLY - Yeah, so they moved in, as due to lockdown they had to rent out their flat and they’re also trying to buy a house, so it made sense for them to come and live in the top floor of our house.

KATE - Well, they’ve been living here since October last year.

HOLLY - Yeah.

KATE - Quite a while actually.

HOLLY - Yeah, and it’s good. They’re great cooks and the kids adore them.

KATE - Yeah, they’re a bit younger than us. The kids think they’re really fun.

HOLLY - And cool.

KATE - Yeah, they’re, like, early 20s. Mid 20s actually, let’s be fair.

HOLLY - I think Will’s almost 27, Kate.

KATE - Is he?

HOLLY - Yes. [laughs]

KATE - Wow, okay. Early 20s, that’s early 20s to me.

HOLLY - Yeah. God, yeah you’re right actually.

KATE - Okay, mid 20s. So Will and Louise now live with us until their new house is bought, which is going to be a few months.

HOLLY - So there’s six of us here now.

KATE - Yeah.

HOLLY - And sometimes it’s crowded, sometimes it’s not. Oh, we lost a cat, because you know we had four cats, that was really sad, a few months ago.

KATE - Oh, yeah.

HOLLY - We were in Cornwall where my dad lives, seeing him, and we got a call saying that one of our cats was dead in the garden because he’d been run over and that was awful.

KATE - Yeah, he’d managed to get himself to the garden. Ralphie.

HOLLY - Little Ralf. He wasn’t the brightest spark was he, but…

KATE - No, but…

HOLLY - He gave, like, proper hugs. He put his paws round your neck.

KATE - Yeah, round your neck. When you picked him up he’d put his paws round your neck.

HOLLY - Like a baby.

kate - And then he’d just hold on and you’d, like, cuddle him.

HOLLY - Oh, I miss him so much. But we’ve got the other three.

KATE - We’ve still got three cats. So yeah, we’ve added three humans.

HOLLY - Minus a cat.

kate - We’ve taken away one cat. Equals…

HOLLY - Lockdown 3.0. [laughter]

KATE - Yeah. Wow.

HOLLY - So here we are.

KATE - So here we are. So babes, how is this lockdown feeling for you?

HOLLY - Er… pretty crap actually.

KATE - Yeah, so better or worse than lockdown 1.0?

HOLLY - Worse. I mean, it’s dark at, like, three o’clock and it gets light at about nine o’clock in the morning. I think… I mean, I can deal with all that, the hardest thing has been, so Scout started school in September, absolutely loved it. She didn’t really get on with preschool much, I think she was quite bored.

KATE - No, she was really happy to go back to preschool. She did a week and then she was like, ah…

HOLLY - Yeah, I’m done now.

KATE - I’m done. I don’t want to go back.

HOLLY - Whereas school has challenged her.

KATE - Well, we ended up not sending her for the last month of preschool, so we were like, oh, is she going to go to school? How’s it going to go? And she went and she loved it.

holly - From day one she has been just such a fan of everything to do with school hasn’t she?

KATE - Yeah.

HOLLY - She gets to do, like, dance and yoga and rugby and she’s got all her little friends and it’s a really, really nice little local school. And we walk in the morning. We had a really nice routine of walking all together to get her and everything. And so we had a lovely term, all prepared for her to go back, and…

KATE - Well, then Christmas happened and then the new variant happened.

HOLLY - Well actually we were probably not going to send her for the first two weeks anyway.

KATE - Well we were thinking about not sending her for the first two weeks and we were, like, oh actually maybe we will send her. Then before school started we were sort of having debates of like, oh should we send her on Monday? Luckily on that Monday…

HOLLY - And then she had an inset day, so we were, like, oh, you know, let’s wait and see what the government do. They didn’t shut schools so we’d literally, like, that afternoon at about, I don’t know, two o’clock, made the decision that she was going to go back to school the next day. So cases in Yorkshire were low compared to London.

HOLLY - Yeah.

KATE - And it’s good for our mental health.

HOLLY - And her mental health. She was desperate to go back. We had a lovely two week Christmas holiday.

KATE - So we decided, we were, like, okay, she’s going to go back to school. “Right, so Scout, you’re going to go back to school, it’s great. You’re going to go back tomorrow.” And then literally five minutes after telling her our phones pinged and it was, like, press conference happening at six o’clock this evening. And then we were like, “Scout, you might be going back to school.” And then all the news started leaking and we said, “Oh, we’re not going to be able to tell you until you’ve been in bed and you’ve gone to sleep. We won’t be able to tell you till the morning,” because obviously the press conference that evening wasn’t till eight o’clock. God, it was so unsettling wasn’t it?

HOLLY - Yeah, that was two and a half weeks ago I think?

KATE - Two weeks ago. Two weeks today.

HOLLY - And so Scout’s school jumped into action and started, you know, said, “Right, we’re going to do home schooling and we’re going to do this online register,” so in the morning all her classmates got on Zoom.

kate - Well no, that’s not what happened. It’s not.

HOLLY - Why don’t you just skip? Just skip the boring bits.

KATE - Because it’s more interesting.

HOLLY - Nothing happened.

KATE - Well, the next day it was all just like, everyone was scrambling all over the place. The school did their best but there was no online stuff, we were just, like, “Okay, you’re not going to school, it’s fine, you’re just going to stay home with Mummy and Mumma,” and she was, like, okay with it and then came home schooling, which the teacher started sending work at the end of that week I think?

HOLLY - Yeah. Oh, I think it was the day after. It was, like, midweek. But, you know, it was fun for five minutes.

KATE - Yeah, she’s really not into home schooling and she’s finding the register quite tough at the moment isn’t she? She’s getting a bit…

HOLLY - Yeah, I think it’s… You know, she’s got 30 kids in her class, so it’s 30 four and five year olds, obviously some of them are in school so she can see them. Everyone’s scrambling to say hello and…

KATE - You can’t really hear anything.

HOLLY - No, it’s actually really… A really stressful start to the morning. And they do emphasise that they’re like, you know, you must be dressed.

KATE - Yeah. You have to be in appropriate clothes at 9:20 to register.

HOLLY - You know, which fair enough, but it just puts extra pressure on. And so we’re not loving that. But we’re just… we’re just trying to get by every day. We’re not teachers.

[music]

KATE - Who’s come downstairs? Oh it’s okay, it’s Louise.

HOLLY - Oh.

KATE - We’re always worried that it might be Scout trying to escape from her bedroom.

HOLLY - Yeah.

KATE - Because it’s night time, we’ve just put her to bed and she’s forever trying to get out and get into our bed.

HOLLY - Yeah, successfully, 99% of the time.

KATE - Yeah. What else is going on? My grandma’s dying, so that’s not fun, and in a pandemic that is even worse. She’s very poorly and we got told on Saturday that she has been moved to palliative care. She’s very old so, you know, she’s had a good life, but… It’s not COVID, it is kind of just old age really, but yeah, I don’t think she’s going to last much longer and we were quite close, me and my grandma, and I haven’t been able to see her. I remember saying to you, do you remember, last year I got upset one day near the beginning of the pandemic, maybe like a few weeks in, I said, “I’m worried I’ll never see my grandma again.”

HOLLY - Yeah, yeah.

KATE - And what did you say?

HOLLY - “Yes, you will”? I don’t know.

KATE - Yeah, you were like, “Don’t be ridiculous, of course you will.”

HOLLY - Oh, your grandma is the most amazing woman, she’s, like, so frail and so old she’s, like, 96.

KATe - 96, yes.

HOLLY - And she’s had so many, like, scrapes with death in the past ten years.

KATE - Near death experiences. Yeah, because one of my friends, right, I’ll tell you this story, one of my friends, my best friend in fact, she went into labour…

HOLLY - I thought I was your best friend. [laughter]

kate - My best friend who I’m not married to.

KATE - She went into labour one night and she phoned me and said, “Can you take me to the hospital?” So I was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll take you to the hospital,” but at this point my grandma was really poorly and I was saying to her, “I don’t think she’s going to make it through the night,” and as a joke I sort of said, “You should name your baby after her, because she’s going to die.” And lo and behold she did. [laughs] She was like, “Actually, I really like that name.” So yeah, and she always jokes with me, she’s always like, “So, how’s that grandma who I named my child after who was supposed to die?” And I was like, “Yeah, still alive.”

HOLLY - Have you told her?

KATE - Yeah, I have. Yeah, of course I have. But yeah, that’s how bounce back-able my grandma is.

HOLLY - Yeah, she’s amazing.

KATE - But I don’t think there is any bouncing back from this one unfortunately.

HOLLY - You never know.

KATE - Well, the doctors have made it fairly clear. So yeah. Anyway, I’d really like to see her, I want to be with my parents and it’s really awful.

HOLLY - Oh course, yeah. It feels like a time where families should be pulling together and being together and supporting each other, yet it’s impossible.

KATE - Also, I have finally got surgery scheduled which I’m very excited about. As long time listeners may know I’ve been waiting for a hysterectomy for a long time, over a year now, because I’ve got a really large fibroid in my womb, and my womb has served me very ill throughout my life. There is nothing… No good has come from this womb has it?

HOLLY - No.

KATE - Literally there’s been no point to it. It’s borne no children, it has just caused pain and anguish. I’ve had really bad endometriosis, this is probably an endometriosis-y thing in my womb, they’re not quite sure, fibroid or adenomyosis or something. The surgeon wants to just get it out so he’s scheduled surgery… you know, as soon as ops came back online he was, like, “Let’s get you in and done.” So in two weeks, hopefully, it will be done. So I’m very excited about that, to finally get it out. So, we’ll be navigating surgery in a pandemic.

HOLLY - Yeah.

KATE - How do you feel about that, Hol?

HOLLY - Not great.

KATE - Why?

HOLLY - Well, I think it’s a risk having it with… Oh, hi Felix. With COVID around, but you really need the surgery so we’ve been waiting for it for a long time, so it’s got to happen and we’ll make it work somehow. We always do.

kate - It’ll be really weird because you and I have been together through quite a lot of surgeries haven’t we? And we have certain coping mechanisms and most of those coping mechanisms involve each other.

HOLLY - Yeah, yeah, like, I mean we’d been together about nine months and you had major surgery at UCL and…

KATE - I had my ovary removed. Part of my bowel shaven off.

HOLLY - Oh, that’s not good. All this stuff, but yeah, we were together all through that really.

KATE - Yeah. Oh, I do have happy memories though of us lying in hospital watching ‘Grey’s Anatomy’.

HOLLY - Yeah.

KATE - And you won’t be able to do that with me now.

HOLLY - No, I know.

KATE - Because that’s how we spent our evenings.

HOLLY - I could Zoom in?

KATE - Yeah.

HOLLY - I could do a watching party.

KATE - But you used to get on my bed with me which the nurses always hated, so any time you heard them coming you’d, like, jump onto the seat and then you’d jump back onto the bed.

HOLLY - That’s quite a few years ago though when we were both really skinny. [laughs]

kate - I don’t think we could do it.

HOLLY - I don’t think we’d fit on a single bed.

KATE - Not after lockdown weight.

HOLLY - No. King size barely takes us.

KATE - But we got fat and happy, it’s fine, when we got together. Oh dear.

HOLLY - Not for much longer, me being a runner.

KATE - Yeah. Ah, that’s the other thing, I can barely recognise you but you’ve started running.

holly - I have. It’s like my happy thing now. I love it. I did Couch to 5K.

kate - So tell me, when did this start and why did it start?

HOLLY - Oh, it started in November. Why did it? Well, I think I was kind of craving my own space and my own thing, and to get out of the house.

kate - And, you know, obviously with lockdown, you know, there’s literally nothing else to do.

holly - Yeah, so I started doing Couch to 5K. Thanks Jo Whiley, you got me through it.

KATE - How did Jo Whiley get you through it?

HOLLY - Because she gives you, like, motivation.

KATE - Is she the voice of it?

HOLLY - She’s the voice.

KATE - Oh, I see.

HOLLY - And so she’s like, “Come on, you can do it!” I was like, “Yes Jo, I can do it.” So I started that and I couldn’t even run for 90 seconds and I’ve just finished an hour and I can run for half an hour now.

KATE - That is amazing. Because if anyone knows Holly in real life they’ll know she is so far from athletic, it is…

HOLLY - Oh, God. I was the kid at school who’d be, like, faking multiple periods every week to get out of swimming, to get out of PE, to get out of anything. Just go missing last thing, you know, just before the lesson. Oh, I just hated it.

KATE - Yeah, I mean, I’ve never known you run or go to the gym or do…

HOLLY - No. I like swimming.

KATE - The most you would do is go swimming with me.

holly - But that’s more of a nice thing. Mindful.

KATE - We go up and down the pool and then we go into the jacuzzi and that’s it.

HOLLY - And we just kind of do little breast strokes, you know, that’s more of a…

KATE - Yeah. Lesbian breast stroke. Sorry!

HOLLY - What? Why are you even…?

KATE - I’m sorry. [laughs]

HOLLY - Why is it even funny?

KATE - Sorry.

HOLLY - Why?

KATE - Why? I’ll have to explain it, Holly.

HOLLY - Okay.

KATE - Anyway, yeah. So you were not a runner.

HOLLY - No. But this is…

KATE - See, I’m looking at my wife thinking… Like for Christmas I bought you running gear.

HOLLY - Yeah, I know.

KATE - It was so weird.

HOLLY - Well, I’d been talking about running for ages and I kept making excuses and I kept saying, “Oh I don’t have the kit, I don’t have the…”

KATE - We tried Couch to 5K before and last time you told me you stopped because you had renal bone disease, which meant that your knees were too sore.

HOLLY - Well, I do have… That’s true, but this time… Anyway, this neighbour came round.

KATE - What’s renal bone disease, for anyone who doesn’t know?

HOLLY - Just crappy, achy bones.

KATE - Isn’t it like sort of weak bones because of your renal disease, your kidney disease?

HOLLY - Yeah, I guess so. It’s probably something to do with phosphate or something. I don’t really know.

KATE - I don’t know.

HOLLY - Anyway, yeah, a neighbour kind of came over with all this, like, brand new gym kit. She was like, “I’m not going to use this so do you want it?” And that’s it.

KATE - Was she trying to tell you something?

HOLLY - Yeah. And that was it, I was like, I’ve no more excuses now, and yeah, it’s been really good for me, really good, lots of… What’s that hormone that you get when you’re…?

KATE - Serotonin?

HOLLY - I don’t know, but you get a really good hormone boost. I’m really hungry actually.

KATE - You are?

HOLLY - Yeah, I’m fading a bit. I think we ought to get some dinner.

KATE - Well, let’s see what our personal chefs downstairs have cooked us this evening.

HOLLY - I can smell good things you see.

KATE - I know, it’s really good. It’s like we bath the kids and put them to bed and then we go downstairs and, like, there’s a meal cooked for us.

HOLLY - And it’s a really good…

KATE - It’s generally pretty good.

[music]

HOLLY - Scout, where are we at the moment?

SCOUT - At McDonald’s.

kate - Yeah. And what are we sitting in?

SCOUT - Our car. And I’m eating a Happy Meal.

KATE - You are. This is our weekly treat with just Scout, and our little one, she naps while we do this.

HOLLY - When Will and Louise are at home.

KATE - We go out, we get a drive thru and we collect the Click and Collect shopping at the supermarket, and it’s good isn’t it? Nice. And Scout, she sits on… You drive don’t you? You drive the car?

SCOUT - I do.

KATE - And who orders the food?

SCOUT - I do.

KATE - And who pays for the food?

SCOUT - I do.

kate - Yeah.

holly - That’s right.

kate - That’s right. And we were just talking about when this crazy lockdown is over what things we’re going to look forward to doing. Scout, you’re keen to get back to school aren’t you?

SCOUT - Yeah.

KATE - What are you excited to do? What’s your favourite thing to do when we can do whatever we want?

HOLLY - Do you know what I miss?

KATE - Hold on, I’m asking Scout.

SCOUT - Swimming.

KATE - Swimming. We love going swimming don’t we?

HOLLY - We do. We love it.

SCOUT - And we like going to the pool but it’s shut on the virus.

KATE - It is shut to the virus. Where else do you miss going? Do you miss going to your friends’ houses for play dates?

scout - I miss going to my friends’ houses at play dates and I go to school.

HOLLY - Yeah, you go to school.

SCOUT - But it’s closed.

HOLLY - It is closed.

[music]

KATE - So we’ve just got up, and Little G’s with us. Hello. Yeah, you want to go downstairs. But we just had some news didn’t we?

HOLLY - Yeah.

KATE - We got a text from my dad just saying that Grandma passed away last night peacefully.

HOLLY - Yeah, very peacefully.

KATE - And… Were you going to say something?

HOLLY - I was going to say she was in her home… in a home that she was living in wasn’t she? In a nice room and…

KATE - Yeah.

HOLLY - And your dad was with her.

KATE - Yeah. Because they, I guess you kind of know, you start to know don’t you when you work in those places that these are the signs to look out for? So they called him, he went back.

HOLLY - And he was with her. And she was the grand old age of 96.

KATE - Yeah.

HOLLY - But it doesn’t make it any less sad, that she was very old and you didn’t get to go and say goodbye

KATE - No.

HOLLY - Which is…

KATE - The hardest thing.

HOLLY - The hardest thing, yeah.

KATE - Can you see the snow, Gracie? Can you see the snow?

HOLLY - It’s snowing.

KATE - Yeah, it’s snowing. It brings some light relief this morning to us all which will be good.

[music]

KATE - Oh, so it has been a really bad day. Yeah. Really bad day. I spoke to her about three o’clock yesterday and she was like, nodding as if she understood what I was saying. We were Facetiming, my dad was with her in the care home. I told her how much I loved her and, you know, how much we’d miss her and what an amazing grandma she’d been. And she managed to speak to all her grandchildren. Dad Facetimed everybody so that everybody could say what they wanted to say, so that was really very nice, and then she had a very peaceful passing, according to my dad.

So, yeah. That was bad. And then I got a phone call about two hours ago from my hospital and I mean, it’s not a surprise, but they’ve cancelled my surgery which, yeah, I’m not surprised about but also I can’t help being a bit gutted about because… You can’t look forward to surgery, but I was looking forward to it because I was looking forward to the problem being gone and not having to be on hormone injections and not having to have the pain all the time and not having to deal with like the bladder problems and the stomach problems that come with it all and everything.

So yeah, it’s just been a really bad day and I just feel a bit crappy and yeah. Oh hey, Milo. Have you come to check up on me? So it’s early. I’ve decided to take a sleeping tablet because I’m exhausted and in loads of pain and know that I probably won’t sleep, so I’ve just taken a sleeping tablet and I’m going to go to sleep, basically because I just don’t want to, like, face it all. So I’ll have a good sleep and pick myself up and try again tomorrow and be a bit brighter about things hopefully. It just sucks because normally, you know, I’d go and be with Mum and Dad right now but we can’t. I would have been with Grandma at some point in the last few days. I would have seen her more, well I would have seen her, full stop, in person over the last year and I barely have. Yeah, the only time I’ve actually seen her was on Facetime a few times when the care home’s been able to arrange it for me. So yeah, it just sucks. This whole thing really sucks.

[music]

KATE - I don’t know how well you’ll be able to hear this because it’s snowing and we’re wearing masks because we’re outside, and…

HOLLY - We’re going to get… We’re going for a wintery walk.

KATE - Yeah, just a short one to the hot chocolate shop. So we were just having a conversation about funerals, and what we’re going to do about Grandma’s. So obviously we both want to go. If everything was normal, do you think Scout would go?

HOLLY - Oh, I don’t know. I think that would be… I don’t know, it totally depends on the tone and whether her cousins are going? You know what I mean?

KATE - Yeah. But I don’t think any of them, there’s space for any of them now. It depends on the numbers.

HOLLY - How many people can she have?

KATE - Right, well the people at the crematorium said that the maximum amount is 30 but it’s not as simple as 30 because all the chairs have to be two meters apart from each other. And they have to be set out in, like, a family group, for example. So if you don’t live with people then you can’t sit with them. So it’s like… [loud car] Oh, big car.

HOLLY - He needs to take it easy on the snow.

KATE - I know. He was going way too fast. He’s going to get into trouble. There’s, like, four chairs at the front and there’s, like, two rows of two chairs and then three chairs. But if someone’s a one then they can’t separate the chairs.

HOLLY - Oh, my God.

KATE - Because there’s not enough space for, like, one chair and then two meters and then another chair and then two meters for 30 people.

HOLLY - Wow. That’s so complicated.

KATE - Yeah, yeah. So already… So, that limits…

HOLLY - Oh my God. As if you want to be, like, thinking about this along with everything else.

KATE - I know. My poor dad and aunty. So yeah, I just don’t… It’s not as simple as you can have 30 people there, it’s like ten times more complicated. We’re literally never going to get to the hot chocolate shop because we’re walking so slowly.

HOLLY - Well, we have to. I don’t want to slip and end up in A&E, I mean, you know. It’s happened before.

KATE - It has. Slipped over, broken both your ankles.

HOLLY - Yeah, exactly. And it wasn’t even snowing then.

KATE - No. Well, let’s just think about ourselves. Like, I’m making a big assumption here but I’m assuming that you’re not going to come because you are shielding.

HOLLY - No, I don’t think I can risk it. I think yeah, no COVID is too rife at the moment for me to go anywhere, let alone being in an enclosed space, which is really crap, because, you know, I loved your grandma to bits and it’s really sad that I can’t be there.

KATE - Yeah. But then the question is should I go?

HOLLY - Well…

KATE - Because obviously I want to.

HOLLY - I know. I’m not going to lie, it makes me a bit nervous, thinking of you going and then coming back into the house having been around all those people and…

KATE - Yeah.

HOLLY - You know, a lot of your family are key workers and so they’re still working.

KATE - Yeah, that’s true.

HOLLY - But obviously if you want to go then I’ll support that and we’ll just have to take the risk and deal with it I guess.

KATE - I know. It’s just so hard, like what is the right and wrong thing to do? Woah!

HOLLY - Oh, are you okay?

KATE - Yeah. That was close.

HOLLY - I know. It feels like the snow’s getting worse as we walk.

KATE - It is, I’m sure it is. Oh, I hate this. I hate it all. I hate that I had to say goodbye on Facetime and not in person. I hate that I can’t be there for my mum and dad. I hate that we can’t just go this weekend and just, like, be…

HOLLY - To support them.

KATE - Like, just be there and help them with all the crap that you have to deal with. I just hate it all. We’re just stuck at home sitting with nothing to do and it’s just crappy. Ergh!

[music]

KATE - So yeah, there’s a lot to think about before you hear from me again. Weighing up a situation like this funeral feels, well, kind of mad really. But on a more positive note, end of next week is my birthday. Hurray! Goodness knows how we’re going to celebrate, but it’ll be my first as a family of four. So I’ll keep you updated on any creative ideas we have. If you have any ideas about the best way to celebrate a birthday in lockdown please let me know, because I always love hearing from you. Maybe you’ve got some ideas on how to celebrate a lockdown birthday. If you do, email my producer, Amy, at [email protected].

And is there anything that particularly, as someone with a disability, you’re struggling with? The chances are if there’s an emotion you’ve felt I’ve probably felt it too, so let me know and maybe we can have a rant together. Ouch also have lots of other wonderful podcasts to help keep you going, so may I just recommend subscribing to this on Sounds so you don’t miss a single episode. Also feel free to follow us on Twitter at BBC Ouch. So, Holly, Scout, Baby G and a handful of cats, extended family members, and I, will see you all next week.