A plague o’ both your houses (Auckland & Wellington)

What interesting plague infected times we live in. We were plunged into alert level 4 (our strictest lockdown conditions) on 17 August due to an outbreak of the delta variant of COVID 19 in the community. It somehow leaked out of a MIQ hotel into Auckland and managed to spread to Wellington (and more recently from a bailed prisoner into the Waikato). Auckland has been locked down for five weeks now. We are back in our bubbles, all at home minimising our movements and our contact with others. Until today we could only go out for groceries, exercise and medical attention. Today we moved to alert level 3, which means we get to click and collect things and are allowed contactless takeaways, but we are still largely at home. We will be locked down until at least the day before my last round of chemo on 6 October. I am possibly one of the only people who feels more connected during lockdown as I am attending regular Zoom calls with my work team and have been having Zooms and calls with my friends.

I am immune compromised so I have to shield, which means no going to the supermarket. I confess I have walked on the golf course next door because it is an opportunity too good to miss and visited the pharmacy because I am on a lot of pharmaceuticals!

My fourth round of chemo really knocked the stuffing out of me, so staying at home wasn’t hard. I was exhausted and had a very upset tummy. I came right around day 11 and spent 10 glorious days getting food delivered…meat, organic fruit and veg, chocolates, bread, pastries and the piece de resistance - doughnuts. I also did some baking - see my pizza, Genoese Apple Cake and ginger gems below. I also made an amazing kedgeree, but I was too busy eating it to get a photo. I think I gained weight after round 4 which I’m totally OK with, as I was getting a bit too skinny for my liking.

I still haven’t been vaccinated against COVID 19. I can only be vaccinated on the Sunday or Monday immediately before chemo. I couldn’t get an appointment before my fifth round so I am booked to have my first Covid vaccine on 3 October - the Sunday before my last round.

The title of this post comes from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and it seems fitting since Auckland and Wellington both had community cases. I must have studied Romeo and Juliet at school or University because I remembered that a friar was asked to deliver a crucial message to the exiled Romeo in Mantua, informing him of a clever potion that was going to make Juliet appear to have died. In a few lines you can see just how conscious they were in Shakesperean England of how infectious pestilence spread from person to person:

Going to find a barefoot brother out,

One of our order, to associate me,

Here in this city visiting the sick,

And finding him, the searchers of the town,

Suspecting that we both were in a house

Where the infectious pestilence did reign,

Sealed up the doors and would not let us forth,

So that my speed to Mantua there was stayed.

The Franciscan friar went either barefoot or in sandals and was required by the order’s rules to travel with another. So he had to find another Franciscan (a barefoot brother) in Verona (in this city) to accompany him. His companion had been visiting the sick and so the friar and his travelling companion were both suspected of having been exposed to the infectious pestilence circulating in the community and were put into quarantine. The public health officials (the searchers of the town) literally locked them in by nailing the doors shut. This resulted in the message not getting to Romeo, so he did not know that Juliet was only sleeping and not dead. This lead to an unfortunate series of events resulting in the suicides of the star crossed lovers. The ill timed quarantine was an agent of their tragic fate.

Shakespeare‘s life was lived very much in the shadow of the Black Death (bubonic plague). His literary works are littered with references to plague and pestilence. I know (from doing history at school and Uni) that the plague was rampant in Shakespearean England and that the Great Fire of London dramatically assisted in ending the bubonic plague by killing many of the rats and fleas spreading it. How the bubonic plague affected Shakespeare, what his compatriots knew about it and the steps they took to avoid illness, interested me, so I spent a few hours researching this.

The plague outbreaks in Shakespearean times didn’t rage forever. Apparently with strict quarantines and a change in weather, epidemics would slowly wane and life would resume as normal. But, after a few years, in cities and towns all over England, the plague would return. It appeared with little warning and was terrifyingly contagious. Death, often in great agony, would almost inevitably follow.

They did things to try and stop the spread but many preventative measures were useless - or in the case of killing all the dogs and cats, worse than useless because the disease was spread by rat-borne fleas. They burnt rosemary, frankincense and bay leaves to clear the air of germs and if they could not find these things, they burnt old boots instead. In the streets the citizens walked around sniffing oranges stuffed with cloves. Anything to rid the nose of the smell of death and burning boots!

The people recognised that the rate of infection was much higher in densely populated areas. Those who could, ran away to the country and often brought infection with them. Officials kept an eye on weekly plague related deaths and when deaths surpassed thirty they took measures we would call social distancing. They banned assemblies, feasts, archery competitions and other forms of mass gatherings. However because they believed it was impossible to become infected during the act of worship church services were not included in the ban (though fortunately sick people were not allowed to attend church). The public theatres in London routinely brought together two or three thousand people in an enclosed space and were ordered shut too. It could take months before the death rate came down enough for the authorities to allow theatres to reopen.

Shakespeare was a shareholder in, and sometimes an actor in his playing company, as well as the playwriter. Throughout his career he had to grapple with repeated and economically devastating closures. A theatre historian (J Leeds Barroll III) concluded that in the years between 1606 and 1610 - when Shakespeare wrote and produced some of his greatest plays including “Macbeth”, “Antony and Cleopatra”, “The Winter’s Tale” and “The Tempest” - the London playhouses were unlikely to have been open for more than nine months!

It is surprising therefore that Shakespeare almost never directly represents the plague in his plays and poems. Instead it is present more as a steady, low level undertone, surfacing in the speeches of characters usually in metaphorical expressions of rage and disgust. “Romeo and Juliet“ is the only play where the plague is an actual prominently featured event. So, there you go. This is what I learnt in lockdown.

I had my fifth round of chemo last week and am slowly climbing out of a hole full of nausea and exhaustion. Thank goodness I only have to go through this one more time. Soon I will be ready to cook and eat again. I spend the time I am sickly trawling through recipes deciding what I will cook when I am well. I have bought a bread maker, so expect photos of bready goodness in my next blog. I have pulled out recipes for Lumberjack Cake, Gin and Tonic Syrup Cake, Victorian Sponge, Date scones, Plum Frangipane Tart and Raspberry and Almond Clafoutis. I will make (and better still eat) some of those things next week.

I have been enjoying gardening when I am well too. I have made a cute wee potted herb garden (I fell through our deck doing so but that is another story) and my potted tulips have rewarded me with my first bloom. I love flowers and this spring my house is full of flowers I have picked from my own garden (daffodils and irises at the moment). I am planning to make a raised garden as I fancy growing my own sweet peas, strawberries, tomatoes, spinach and rocket. That’ll be a job for me once my chemo is all over. In the meantime I am reading up on companion planting.

2 weeks to go until I bid farewell to chemo. Tomorrow I have my initial consultation with my Radiation Oncologist, Maria. If she is half as awesome as Steve and Sheridan, she’ll be FABULOUS!

Before I finish this blog I would like to say a couple of things. It makes me sad that people think more of themselves and their rights than how the exercising of their rights might impact on others. I have noticed that some people are selfishly advocating against wearing masks. As someone immune compromised and as the mother of a child that cannot yet be vaccinated people who think it is their right not to wear a mask profoundly annoy me. Those people seem to fail to grasp the reality that wearing a mask protects others from them. If they don’t want to do it for me, they should want to do it for the children who cannot be vaccinated yet. My other observation is about chemo in alert level 4 and how amazing it has been to connect with my fellow cancer warriors and the wonderful medical staff during treatment because we could not have support people with us. It has been my profound privilege to meet a lot of amazing people during this cancer journey. My life is richer because of it.