Author: Peter

We landed in Hanoi at 5.20 am and went straight to our hotel where we’d booked a room for the night that was just ending.  It was good to get some proper sleep before starting our day.  

We had two days and nights in Hanoi, then one overnight stay on a boat in the spectacular Halong Bay, then on to the cities of Hue and then Hoi An.  Some beautiful places and great experiences but our escorted group tour was very different to expectations as we were the only people in the group!  At each location we had our own personal tour guide and a dedicated driver.  It seemed as if a lot of people had dropped out of the holiday.  It was very noticeable that tourist sites and hotels in Vietnam were beginning to suffer because Chinese visitors were totally banned from the country because of the Coronavirus epidemic.  There weren’t too many people around.

On Saturday 7 March we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City and met our next tour guide and driver.  After a very hot and exhausting day of sightseeing on Sunday 8 we went back to our hotel.  During the evening, I began to feel feverish and had a high temperature.  Not surprisingly, the hotel manager referred to his COVID-19 contingency plan and we were both immediately whisked off to a public hospital with a quarantine building patrolled by armed guards.  All of belongings, bar just a few we could grab in the ten minutes we were allowed, had to be left in the hotel room.  We didn’t see our suitcases again for four days – they were packed by hotel staff (presumably in Hazmat suits).

The quarantine hospital had the most basic facilities and the worst food imaginable.  The only way we could enjoy anything remotely edible was to get the odd McDonalds meal smuggled into the hospital with the help of fellow patients and the nursing staff! Outdoor and indoor temperatures were in the high 30s and there was no air conditioning.  One plus point was the fact that they provided free Wi-Fi for the detainees – mostly Vietnamese nationals but also a few unfortunate tourists like us.  

We were tested for COVID twice (fortunately negative for both of us both times), however X-rays showed I had pneumonia. I was immediately treated with oxygen, antivirals and intravenous antibiotics and, despite the language barrier, my treatment by the medical staff was very good.

By Government decree we had to be incarcerated for seven days. However, after five days we were able to negotiate our way out of the quarantine hospital and into a private American-style hospital where we both stayed for a further 10 days until my antibiotic treatment came to an end.  Sue slept on the sofa in my ‘luxury’ hospital room as we both had to be in isolation.  

The second hospital was lovely, and thankfully was funded by our travel insurance company.  Our holiday visas expired while we were in the hospital and contrary to all the rules, the British Vice Consul agreed to send her driver to the hospital to collect our passports so the visas could be renewed.  Meanwhile, back home, our son Richard was able to book us two business class seats (all that was available) on the very last direct flight from HCMC to Heathrow on 21 March – nearly a full week later than planned and just hours before the first UK COVID-19 lockdown started.  What a relief to be home!

Week commencing 10 February – I performed in the Abbots Langley Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s production of Ruddigore at Watford Palace Theatre.  This was my twenty-fifth performance at the theatre with ALGSS – something I really looked forward to every year.  But this time something wasn’t quite right.  My singing voice wasn’t very good – it sounded really thin, and I had felt very tired during the long rehearsal period.  

I really struggled to get into and out of the heavy costumes and there were four costume changes in all for every performance.  All around me members of the cast were suffering from really bad colds and respiratory infections.  The next week I developed a really bad cold with a very annoying cough.  The news about the Coronavirus continued to develop.  There were now confirmed cases in the UK.  Had I had it?  On Friday 28 February I still had the remnants of the infection and was taking decongestants and Benylin for the annoying cough.  We drove to the airport for our flight to Hanoi and discussed the fact that things might be very different by the time we got home.  

It was getting really difficult to climb out of the bath, and also really hard to stand up from kneeling on the floor.  I put it down to age.

In the news there were increasing reports about a novel Coronavirus that had originated in Wuhan in China.  The city had gone into lockdown, but cases were beginning to emerge in other parts of the world, for instance in Italy.  We began to get a bit concerned about our planned escorted touring holiday of Vietnam and Cambodia.  We’d booked it about ten months before and were due to fly from Heathrow on Friday 28^th February.  

A very strange thing began to happen when I blew my nose.  Instead of air rushing out through my nose, a strange noise would come from the back of my throat.  It was as if the muscles there had weakened.  Very odd.  I didn’t think about it too much and definitely not something to bother the doctor with.

Anyway, I booked to see the local osteopath who told me that my left shoulder problem was due to a sub-acromial bursa, and this could be relieved by massage, manipulation, ultrasound treatment and exercise.  This regime seemed to bring a bit of relief after about six sessions, but I’ll always wonder whether the problem was actually an early indication of MND affecting my left arm – something that came back with a vengeance two years later.

Around the same time tiredness was getting more and more noticeable, and I was definitely running out of energy.  After a blood test my GP increased my daily dosage of thyroxine (that I’d been on for twenty years) from 175 mcg to 200 mcg.  This is a pretty big dose, and it didn’t really help.  

My shoulder was no better really, and now I was beginning to get more severe cramp, this time in both my legs nearly every night.  They would seize up while I was sleeping, and I would leap out of bed in agony.  

I went to the doctor to talk about these things, and also my increasing tiredness.  I was told I should have made more than one appointment if I wanted to talk about more than one problem.  Not very helpful.

My GP prescribed Quinine Sulfate for the cramp and physiotherapy for the shoulder pain.  The NHS physiotherapy was pretty disappointing; in effect I was only given a set of exercises to do on my own at home.  No-one examined my shoulder or gave me a clue about what the problem might be.  After about four sessions (during which the physiotherapist seemed to become increasingly frustrated with my lack of progress) I decided to discharge myself.

I had taken a tumble down some steps in the garden a few months earlier so we got a local craftsman to install some handrails.

Out of the blue I had quite a lot of pain in my left shoulder and weakness in the upper arm.  Had I pulled a muscle during a ‘keep fit’ class?  We went on holiday to the USA in October 2018 and opening the driver’s door was really painful.

  

I distinctly remember the first time I felt a really sharp pain in my ribs when I bent down and stretched out to reach a power socket behind the TV.  A few days later something similar happened again – a really excruciating pain in my right side that made me catch my breath.  I remember remarking on it at the time, but we both soon forgot about it.

Other odd things started happening around the same time.  While painting a door I found my fingers would lock around the paint brush and it was quite difficult to let go.  Then I found that, every time I knelt down, I would get cramp in the upturned arches of my feet.

I needed root canal treatment and a crown on an upper molar.  My dentist was quite exasperated when, every time she inserted a dental tool into the back of my mouth, my throat would gag uncontrollably.  I’d never experienced that before.  

On their own these were pretty insignificant things, and not the sort of thing you’d waste a doctor’s time with.