Tuesday, my third day of COVID, so much unwell admin to do. I wake at 5:30 very hungry but with a rasping throat. I leave Spinalonga (I’ve named the spared room where I am holed up) and go to the kitchen to make coffee and toast which I smother in honey and retreat to Spinalonga. Here I drink and eat after downing my usual meds plus the antibiotics. By my calculations I can take more antibiotics at about two o’clock. I suck Strepsils and reflect but in the end try to get back to sleep. I wake again at 8 o’clock to the usual working day sounds of the house. I am wondering what I am going to do for the rest of the day, I could like a friend take a long bath and watch Lucifer but I lack the IT water skills to do this with confidence in my current state. I ring the service that is supposed to be shoving a camera down my dick on Wednesday and get the answer phone again. All this and only nine o’clock.

My phone rings. This is a surprise and I have no idea who it can be. A friendly voice, one I understand, introduces himself as a doctor from the local COVID medication service. We chat and he offers me an “infusion”. He cannot fool me I know this a canular in the arm job. We agree that I will find my way to the unit for 11 o’clock. I get up and clean my teeth with a new tooth brush, daub myself with Calvin Klein One and dress. I organise my office bag, adding the The Elegance of the Hedgehog to it. I restore the car to its pre holiday configuration and set off to the hospital. I get there just fine but can I find some where to park, no I can’t. To crown it all I get a call from “camera down your dick” in response to my message. I try to explain that I have COVID and that I am currently at the hospital. There is a torturous exchange and I agree to phone them when I am well enough. All this while I’m trying to find somewhere to park. So in my desperation and annoyance I park the car on a bit of grass alongside another car. I walk to the unit and I am greeted and offered a proper hospital mask, they are insistent that my trendy, vented one will not do. I am seated in a reclining chair and I am immediately back in chemo, same set up. I’m in a dedicated chair with a time table.

I settle in, the canular goes in followed by a bit of saline. My SATS are taken and monitored during the session. Then the infusion of the anti viral protein is added. Of course there is paper work that gets done by the doctor and I sign a consent form. Could have been anything in reality. So I sit and be infused whilst I read occasionally interrupted by the SATS taking. My SATS through our are pretty good actually and apparently I stayed awake the entire time.

I get to 12:45 and I have shown no adverse symptoms, the team have been cheery and efficient and so I am allowed to leave. I have no doubt someone will ask me for feedback soon on how I found the experience. I leave and return to my car to find that a white van has been parked so as to leave almost no space for me to get out. Another example of “white van mans arseholeism”. I rise above the obvious “I’ll stuff you” intention of the WVM’s moronic mind and with deft and adroit skills manoeuvre out demonstrating supreme “up yours” determination. I drive home feeling drained and without spoons. How ever the team at the clinic deserve a cheer, they were very good, so a big thank you to them all, especially the one who got my cannula in first time. Hip hip hooray!

So I am home with coffee, biscuits and water. There are antibiotics to take now and a nap to have. Tonight there is a football match. Beyond this there are no spoons. I settle back into Spinaloga and see how my body copes with the cornucopia of drugs it now has inside it. I suppose its too much to hope for a rare mutation that will give me super powers. I like super powers.