Victor & Paula

Brief Outline:

After contracting Covid in the middle of the second wave of the pandemic in the UK, Victor spent 5 weeks in ICU and 1 week on the ward between mid-January and the end of February 2021. He was ventilated and continues to recover at home.

Time of interview May 2021

Background:

Paula and Victor have been married for 35 years. Their son Rob (24) lives with them. Victor works as a black cab driver. Ethnicity: White British.

More about me...

Working as a black cab driver, Victor felt reasonably protected by the measures put in place for his protection: a shield between the passenger and himself. As such, he had not been terribly worried about his health before he contracted Covid.

In the first week of January 2021, Victor came home from work fatigued, in a mood that was untypical for him, and with no appetite. He went straight to bed and took the next day off work. It was his son Rob (24), who lives with his parents, who suggested they all get tested. Only Victor’s test came back positive – the one for Rob and Victor’s wife Paula came back negative. Victor remembers little from that time. Looking back, this will have been due to his low oxygen levels.

Paula remembers that he came home tired and went straight to bed. Victor deteriorated over a number of days: she could see him struggle with his breathing. On Thursday, she called for an ambulance. The paramedics came and checked on him, but initially did not take him to hospital. Between then and Sunday, Victor said he was doing okay, but he was clearly deteriorating. On Sunday he came down from the room where he was sleeping (separate from Rob and Paula) and said that they needed to call an ambulance.

The paramedics returned, asked Victor for his name (which he could say), measured his oxygen levels (now much lower than they had been previously), and put an oxygen mask on Victor. They decided to take him in. Paula was asked to get his phone and charger ready. She enquired how serious the situation was. The paramedic said, “We’re not hanging around”. Paula kissed Victor goodbye, unsure whether this was okay to do considering that he was ill with an infectious disease, and then the ambulance left for the local hospital. This was at 11:25am – and by 2 p.m. Victor had been admitted to a Covid ward.

Whilst Victor was in hospital

Paula received daily updates on Victor’s condition from the doctors working in hospital, who called in the evening after their shifts had ended. When they called, Paula could hear beeps from machines in the background. The doctors usually informed Paula of what they were going to do before they did it: for instance, on the Monday, the doctors called to say that they were going to take Victor up to ICU. However, calling beforehand was not always feasible. Doctors had ventilated Victor without calling first, and this meant that Paula had not spoken to Victor before he was mechanically ventilated.

Paula initially shared the information she got on the phone with a friend who lives locally, who listened and gave space to Paula’s emotions and concerns. This friend helped Paula relay the information she was getting from the hospital about how Victor was doing in such a way that Paula could then share it with friends, colleagues and family. She did this through a WhatsApp group, which gave everybody all the information, and the chat history serves as a kind of record of what has happened. People would reply to her either in the group or individually, offering support in whatever way they could. Talking things through with her friend and sharing the information through the WhatsApp group meant that Paula now feels that she has worked through her feelings sufficiently to not require any further emotional support. Other sources of support for Paula were neighbours and her sisters.

Whilst on ICU, Victor suffered from pneumonia, kidney injury, and an infection. He was prescribed antibiotics and blood thinners. Paula found it hard not to be in hospital with Victor. If she had been there, she would have been able to speak to staff more easily – but all this now had to be done over the phone. Paula recalls that doctors in conversations with her never used the word “stable” to describe his condition until Victor was on the ward. They generally explained things well, and Paula did not feel the need to look up additional information.

Paula understood that calls in the evening were likely to be updates on how Victor was doing; any calls during the day were likely to be bad news. So, she generally went out and did things during the day. This meant that sometimes, she was out of the house when she got a call. On one such day, when she was in the bank, the doctor told her to “prepare for the worst”. That was a very difficult day, especially as she could not go to the hospital. Rob refers to this day as “Black Friday”.

Victor was transferred to a teaching hospital in the vicinity, after which communication between Paula and the doctors in hospital improved. Paula thinks this is because they had more staff to call family members at home.

Waking up from coma

Victor recounts waking up from a coma 2½ weeks after he was ventilated. He had experienced terrible delusions that have, in his words, “scarred him for life”. He describes these dreams as traumatic as they were so vivid and real to him. He had believed he was in Canada all this time, that he was trapped, captured by a sect, that he was dying, and that he was being held against his will.

When Victor was experiencing these delusions, the nurses had asked Paula to help calm him down, and to convey that he was not held against his will. This is when Paula and Rob were able to FaceTime Victor for the first time, and ‘saw’ him for the first time in 4 weeks. To prepare Rob for the call emotionally, Paula had looked up pictures of ICU patients to show Rob what he might see.

Unfortunately, Victor had to be re-intubated as he had a congestion in his lungs. Victor was moved back to the local hospital which Paula found difficult, as it meant she would again be receiving fewer updates.

Once he had been weaned off the ventilator a second time, Victor had difficulty sleeping and spent a lot of time awake in the ICU unit. He remembers that other patients lay really still for days on end, which frightened him. But gradually more and more wires got disconnected, which he took as a sign that he was getting better. He tried to maintain a positive attitude, which he feels that this has played a big role in getting better.

Victor was moved out of ICU onto the general ward. Victor initially struggled with walking: sitting up in the chair next to his bed was arduous and extremely fatiguing. But he always kept thinking about the next stage of his recovery and kept going. He was in touch with Paula and Rob via his phone, and friends texted him and sent him videos – Victor experienced this as really supportive. The messages were uplifting, and “helped him fight”. Victor was eager to come home. After the results for a brain scan returned showing no damage, he was discharged home, in a wheelchair 10 days after his discharge from ICU. He was clapped out of hospital by staff members.

At home

Victor had online support sessions to help with the paralysis of his vocal cords. He had trouble eating as his tongue had folded due to being pressed to one side by the tubes. He had to build his strength back up and fatigued quickly. Paula helped him get onto the exercise bike. Victor had initially wanted to start training where he had left off but needed to learn to pace himself. He initially did lengths up and down the garden, every day a bit longer and further than the day before.

At the time of the interview, Victor had built his strength up to a level just below where it had been before his hospital admission. He found his process of recovery motivating when recovery was visible, but frustrating when it plateaued after 5 weeks. He wonders whether this is as far as he will improve, or whether it is just slow from here onwards. He feels 20 years older compared to how he felt before his hospitalisation. He works half the hours at work. Nevertheless, his critical illness episode has not changed his positive outlook on life.

There have been difficult moments: for Paula this was when she was not able to see Victor in person, and when she saw how poorly he was on camera, even though seeing him alive was a huge relief. For Victor, the stagnation of his progress in recovering was difficult.

Now, after 12 weeks of recovery at home, the remaining symptoms are a coarse voice due to the tube having pressed against his vocal cords, occasional breathlessness, drop foot, and fatigue. When asked what was most helpful to him in his recovery, he mentions the district nurse who initially came to his house once a day to help with the dressings of the tracheostomy wound, the physiotherapy (who has now referred him to a neurologist for his drop foot and tingling feeling in his foot), and the speech therapist. After some weeks, Victor went back to work. His speech therapist worried that this would mean he would be talking a lot.

Messages to others

Victor is extremely grateful to the NHS staff for what they have done. He would like to see a member of staff from the hospital face-to-face, which was likely to happen at his appointment that was scheduled for the week after the interview. Victor would like to tell others that if they need critical care, ICU is the best place for them. Paula adds that the message that hearing a loved one needs to go to ICU is likely to be a shock to relatives.

A doctor called Paula to tell her that her husband Victor would maybe need to be mechanically ventilated.

He was all masked up, he had…he was on oxygen, so that was on the Sunday he went in, on the Monday, they phoned me and said that they would possibly be taking him up to ICU. So, they would always pre-warn you about things that they were going to do, that was very good. And then on Tuesday, they said ICU are looking at him, they think that he will have to go, so they were warning me that they may have to put him into a coma, but they would phone me first.

Wednesday morning, they phoned me, and they said they didn’t have time, they couldn’t phone me, they didn’t have time, they had to get him into a coma, there and then. So he went, we just didn’t speak to him at all and so that was a little bit like, oh wow, when are we next going to talk to them. And up at [name local hospital], obviously they hadn’t got a training school there. So, the doctors would phone you, it could be late in the evening, I was like, hanging on every phone call.

Victor experienced the removal of every wire and tube as a positive step in his recovery.

Yes, because I saw…where I had come out of the coma and I was gradually being weaned off…it was a great feeling, every time a wire or a pipe was taken out of my body. That was a visual realisation of me getting better and I was like, euphoric, even just like…so I’ve still got all the scars, even being gradually…even the oxygen being gradually reduced, just to see how I would react, and I was reacting well. In my old age, I actually realised these years ago, how much psychology plays a part in everyday life.

You could meet any of my friends, any of my relatives and one thing they would all say about me, especially [neighbour] up the road who is into counselling and mindfulness, she says I’m the most positive person she has ever met. We’ve got something on the wall there that says, everything about my personality, happy, laughter, fun, optimist, optimistic, I’m not grumpy, even when I was on my death bed. I was trying to make the nurses laugh, apart from one nurse, I wanted to fight him. But even in my middle age, well I’m not old yet but I always feel, if you’re positive, there’s more chance of something positive happening. I’ve felt that for a long time and so when all these wires and pipes, I was thinking…always thinking of the next stage and looking forward to the next stage, even though I was probably experiencing unpleasantness at the time. I could see things happening, that were for the good and the next stage was going into a normal ward.

Once I was in the normal ward, I was laying there, I still couldn’t go to the toilet on my own and I still couldn’t look after myself, hygienically and there was this chair, armchair, next to me. That was the next target, to get out of bed and they were encouraging me all the time, and this is one thing I will take to my deathbed, what an achievement it was to actually get out of bed and sit up in a chair.

Paula noticed that doctors never said that Victor was “stable”. At the same time, he was not ‘unwell enough’ to warrant an end-of-life visit.

And did you feel you were ever part of any decisions? Were there any decisions you had to make?

No. On that Friday night when we, both me and my son, spoke to the doctors and I said to them, well you’re telling us that it’s, you know, that he may only have the next 12, 24 hours. And they never, ever said that he was ever stable, it was that he never deteriorated. He’d stopped deteriorating. That was the words that they used. And then I said to the doctor, I said is there any way, I said, that we can come...get to see him? And they said no, not unless it’s end of life.

So that was...I didn’t get to make decisions. And like with the trache, they never asked me, they told me that’s what they had to do. So what do you say to them? If they’re saving someone’s life, you let them get on with it, don’t you? So, it’s hard, when you’re not actually in the hospital. I didn’t get to see any...you didn’t get to see anyone. Can’t thank anyone properly.

Victor called many friends from the hospital, which broke the ice for them to get in touch with him again.

They were very thorough in how they explained a lot of things to me, so I didn’t really need to, sort of, research the medication and stuff, because they would tell me what it was and what it was doing. So, they, in that sense, yeah, they were very thorough. I did look up...I knew what a trache was, but I’d looked it up to show my son, because they said to us when you see Vic on the camera, when they did the second...another Facetime...because Vic didn’t really want to do it. And then all of a sudden, he changed his mind and said he would. And I showed Rob. I said look, I said that’s what you might see is that it’s going to be a tube into the throat. I said, just so that you’re not, sort of, traumatised by it. So, we knew what we were going to be seeing but it...sometimes it was literally just a wave. And I said if that’s all we can have, I said that’s fine, just for us to know that he was okay. So sometimes it was literally just a wave, and he didn’t speak. But then they fitted him with the little speaking valve, and he had a few little conversations.

And then he was allowed to have his phone in, and I think the best thing for Vic was where he Facetimed so many people and they were shocked that he actually Facetimed them. And I think that broke the ice for a lot of people. That, you know, where he had been and where he had come from, to sort of speak to people like that. And he did it with my sisters and they said oh it was just so great to see him. So that was good.

Paula felt overwhelmed when she could not go with Victor when he was taken by ambulance.

I called the ambulance and I told them what his levels were on Thursday night and because I had the oximeter there, his levels had gone down to 77, which…my one was out by 2 per cent, so theirs was at 75, it would have been, mine was a little bit higher or it was the other way round, I can’t remember now.

They went, don’t worry, we’ll have someone there immediately and yes, they arrived, the ambulance arrived within…it had to be 10-15 minutes, they were here, and she had me on the phone and she said, if he passes out, get him onto the floor. They came in and as…because they could see, I’d put it on his little finger, so they could see the oximeter, so as one of them was coming round, the other one was unwinding the oxygen, there and then, as they could see it. They asked his name, and he could tell them his name and he just said…the paramedic said to him, so Vic, what’s been happening, he said, I haven’t been totally honest, I’m not well and me and my son was standing there thinking, what has he not told us. So, they took his oxygen, obviously his oxygen levels on their meter, blood pressure, his blood pressure was through the roof and his heart rate was through the roof.

So, therefore, then they went…they were here, got here at eleven, left at 11:25, in the ambulance and she shut the door…she said, you better say goodbye now. So, we kissed him goodbye and didn’t know really whether to because we didn’t know, if he’s that infectious and he just looked through us as they shut the doors, he just looked through us as if we wasn’t there. He didn’t…it’s like he couldn’t see us and shut the doors and I said…I went to the paramedic, how serious are we talking, and she went, oh we’re not hanging around. I thought, oh my word and that was it, the doors were shut, and he was gone, and it was like, what do we do now, we just stood in the middle of the road. And it was…they phoned me, they were very, very good, I have to say, each time, once they’d got him to the hospital and he had been seen, I had phone calls constantly updating me. So, that was really good, that part, yes so, they said to me that they would…that he would be put up on a Covid ward.

So, at 11:25 he left here, by 3 o'clock in the afternoon, he was on a Covid ward, and they’d said…the paramedics had said to me, make sure he’s got his phone and charger which we’d put in his bag and because I’d had it ready from the Thursday night. So, I literally shove it…and they went but…I said well it was ready from Thursday because it was literally putting his phone and a charger in and we never spoke to him again, after that, for five weeks because he couldn’t actually talk on the phone.

When Victor was moved between hospitals, the impact of staffing on communication with family became particularly apparent to Paula.

The information that I got from [name teaching hospital] was very much in-depth, with everything that they did with him. You know, from how they were cleaning him, what they were doing and whether they’d played the videos to him, what medication he was on. And they went through the whole thing. It could be about 20 minutes I’d be on the phone sometimes. So, it was...I didn’t really have to do too much research. And I think sometimes ignorance is bliss.

In some sense.

And did you want more information at any...did you want a different kind of information at different stages?

When he went back to [name local hospital] I found really hard, because I’d had that...the information in the morning... Because the doctors used to do their rounds in the morning and I’d have my update it, sort of, settled my mind during the day. Whereas when he went back to [name local hospital] and he was still in ICU, there was one night that I didn’t get a call and it just...me and Rob [son] were, like, on the floor with that, just like, just to have that call, that...it was, like, that reassurance of a phone call. Yeah, it was just that reassurance. But they were very...it wasn’t that they weren’t thorough, but you could hear the... their time was precious to them, you know? That’s how I felt and, like I said, in [name local hospital] you could always hear the machines going off in the background and what have you, so that was hard.

Very much difference between those two hospitals, then?

Yeah. But I think, like I said, because [name teaching hospital] was a training hospital, so a lot of the training doctors were going around with the main doctors collecting all the information and then they’d go away and phone. Which made it so much easier, I think, for the main doctors there.

The ICU staff told Paula all they knew about Victor was his name and age and asked her to send in pictures and audio. These inspired Victor not to give up.

Paula: They asked me at [name teaching hospital] if I would send in pictures and audios, this was absolutely amazing because my sisters then sent pictures in, I sent in pictures because what they said to me, when they first spoke to me at [name teaching hospital] was, all we know about Victor is his name and how old he is. I thought, wow, so I sent in a little email, a little update of where he was from and what he was and what job he did and what have you and then sent in pictures.

Then friends, all our friends, sent in little audios, talking to him, which is what they asked for and they said, it was just totally amazing because that really helped with bringing him round, that he could hear voices and it wasn’t just me and Rob, it was our friends and they were all…one of our friends, [name friend], did…

Victor: He’s a bit of a DJ.

Paula: Yes, so he did some little…

Victor: Sets.

Paula: Little sets and sent them and Vic, this has been requested by such and such and then he would play a little song, so that went down really well, they said, it was amazing what we got.

Victor: We’ve got a very, very close-set inner circle of friends but we actually know, outside that, we know a lot of people and in turn, a lot of our close friends know a lot of people and some very close friends organised the messages from some world-famous people, world famous actor, world famous old footballer and when they came through, I sat there, I was totally blown away and inspirational, so inspirational.

I lay there thinking, if people can take the trouble to get in touch with these people for me, I can’t…obviously I can’t let my family down by deteriorating any more. People that, I didn’t realise, thought so much of me and that really, really gave me even more fight, I wasn’t going to leave Paula, I wasn’t going to leave Rob [son] ever, not while I had some fight in me. But I was totally blown away by the realisation I was actually quite liked. It was really, really inspiring, if felt as if I failed to survive, I would be letting a lot of people down, that’s what it felt like.

Paula tried to continue her everyday life as best she could after she had heard that Victor may not survive.

There’s two ways of going through this, where you go and hide under the covers and you don’t get up for days. But then I had a house to run, I had a son to feed, I had a dog to walk and feed. So, it was like I got myself back into my routine and obviously just waiting on calls. I did a lot of sewing. Did some sewing, that sort of thing, crocheting. So, I did keep my mind occupied a bit. But yeah, I suppose it’s hard but, you know, having friends around that I spoke to and keeping it open, being open with people, I think was a big thing. And sort of, my sisters were phoning every day. And I’ve got a brother and he did actually come down. Although he was not allowed, not supposed to, but he did on that Friday night. He came down here, so...

This was when Vic had just gone in.

No, this was the...what Rob calls Black Friday. That Friday he came down, because he was devastated as well, with the news. So, he came down. I said don’t come down. I said you’re not allowed. No, I’m coming. And he came and we just all sat in socially distanced chairs.

Strange times, huh?

Yeah. Because I didn’t...it’s like he wanted to get hold of me and hug me and I’m going you can’t, you can’t. You can’t do that. And it’s really hard, 'cause it’s your...it’s my brother, so... That was hard.

Victor had days on which he felt sad. He sat in the garden in the beautiful weather of the first lockdown for a few days. Then he slowly began to set himself goals.

Paula: The day that he had a little bit of a blip here, little bit of...

Victor: Little snivel.

Paula: Little sad...

Victor: Feeling sorry for myself.

Paula: Yeah. I said to him...It was a lovely day. It was like this. And I said come on, I said, come and sit out in the garden. Just sitting out in the garden just made such a difference to him and getting the sun on his face. And then he had a couple of days of sitting outside and then he said oh, I’m going to cut the grass. I said I’ll do it, no I’ll cut it. And he did two lengths and said down, had to have a rest, did two lengths, sat down...

Victor: I love cutting the grass.

Paula: So, it was...he did his own therapy, really.

Victor: But even with getting back to walking, I was quite sensible then, wasn’t I?

Paula: Yeah.

Victor: We would do, initially, as Paula said earlier, a few lengths of the garden, with the frame. Then with...

Paula: Crutches.

Victor:...crutches and then walking with crutches, but just holding them in the air, so my legs were doing all the work. Then we progressed from that to walking up the road. Then I had this ambition of getting somewhere near the walks that we do with  Sky [dog] in the forest, because they’re beautiful walks. And, yeah, I progressed that way.

And I was like, if you’re into your fitness, like you probably know, you get... I don’t...I’m not sure of the medical term but when you experience that euphoria you release endorphins, that sort of thing. I was experiencing all that again, even though I was only doing a fraction of what I was used to. But I was getting there. I knew I was getting there. As long as I was sensible. As long as I didn’t do too much to send me back a few stages. So, for once in my 62 years, I was sensible. Yeah. Yes, that was good. Yeah. But as I say, for quite some time I haven’t even felt unwell. I don’t feel unwell now, it’s just these symptoms that I’ve got.

Victor learned the hard way that he had to be patient with how much physical activity he could do.

Victor: There was an obvious path of improvement that I was driven to achieve, and I had this comment from one of the doctors ringing in my ears and it meant I had to be sensible. One of the doctors said, Mr [last name], your biggest problem is going to be one of patience, I’m trying to run before I can walk. So, I thought you’ve got to be sensible here, but I did push myself too much on one or two occasions and knocked me back a couple of days.

Paula: We had your bike down here, didn’t we, we bought the exercise bike down and the first day he got on it, he wanted to do what he used to do, and he nearly fell off…

Victor: Yes, after about 20 seconds, this bike, I would do four or five miles on the resistance level of 14. I don’t know what entered my mind, I said to Paula, I’m going to have a go on the bike, so as Paula said, we moved it down here and I got on the bike, straight up to level 14, I nearly fell off after about 20 seconds. So, I thought, you aren’t being sensible here.

Paula: I said, you’ve got to start from level one, I said and just do, even if it’s a minute, 30 seconds and then you build yourself up which is what you did…

Victor: So, I’m now back up to what I was before, took me ten or eleven weeks but that was good. Perhaps it was because I used to like a bit of fitness before, I’ve always been fit but I’ve never been like a strong man, I’ve never had any upper body strength but always had good legs. I could run, I could cycle, even literally two or three weeks before I was taken ill…

Paula: It was just before Christmas, wasn’t it, you went up there.

Victor: Two or three weeks before I was taken ill, I got on my mountain bike and cycled about 40 miles, that’s hard on the road, I don’t know if you know, to use a mountain bike on road is quite hard work. I went to see my brother-in-law and then my other brother-in-law, in Canada, he is a strong man and he’s very fit. He said to me on the phone, is that right, you cycled up to [name friend], he’s scratching his head, he didn’t know how I did it. Then a few weeks later, I was ill.

So, I was always a fit man but as I say, not strong but I think I’ve got a strong heart and I think that helped my recovery as well. I think it did, I don’t know but the main contributing factor, for my recovery, was Paula and Rob [son] and the NHS. If I didn’t have those three things, I honestly don’t think I’d be here.

Victor is likely to be left with scars on his vocal chords and with nerve damage to his foot.

Victor: Again, I’ve got a lasting memory of all these different medical teams coming round and asking me how I am and everything they said was concentrating on being positive. But there was one comment, one of the doctors said to me…and the doctor said, look if this is what you’re left with, like the voice and the foot, he said, take it because you’ve been very, very ill.

Although the positive side is that I’ve come out of the stage of being very, very ill, obviously that’s a positive but that was the only slightly negative, if I am going to be left…the statement said there was a chance I would be left with these scars. So, if I have to take it, I’ll take it, but I don’t want to, so yes…

Paula: Vic doesn’t hear it, but I do, I hear the improvement, even though it might be a minute every day there is.

Victor: I actually think it don’t sound too bad today, but I’ve actually been back to work for about three weeks, and I don’t think my speech therapist was too pleased because I think, even though she’s known me for five minutes, she knows I actually enjoy talking, which she would rather I didn’t have to talk as much as I do. But I like talking to people, I’m interested in people, without being nosey and talking to people is a major part of my job and my day.

So, when I said I’m back at work, she said to me, oh so you’re talking then, I went you’re talking to me now, of course I’m talking but I think in an ideal world, I have to be sensible with that as well and my voice does deteriorate during the day, sometimes I have to break up sentences to complete the sentence. So, that’s one of the scars but the other scar is the physio said, she’s seen this quite often, the people that have had Covid, as bad as me, have what they call drop foot.

So, it’s literally where the foot drops randomly and what I’ve got as well, on my feet is not a pain but it’s a sensation, a tingling feeling on the top of my feet and I don’t know, but when I was bedridden, I think this is common practice, but I was put in these surgical socks…

Paula: Stockings.

Victor: I think it’s helps you not have…

Paula: Strokes.

Victor: …strokes but it was like my feet were clamped and my toes were clamped and that would have been for the entire duration, six, seven, eight weeks.

Victor spoke to Paula about what had happened, but it was little moments that brought it all home to him.

Victor: The biggest aspect of being made aware of what I went through was, as I said earlier, since I’ve been home Paula has drip-fed me information of what I actually went through. Some of it shocked me. And I said...

Paula: Yeah, we did it over a period of time. Didn’t do it all in one hit.

Victor: It wasn’t as soon as I got home. It may have been two, three, maybe four weeks later, you know.

So what did that look like? You sat down...

Victor: Well, it’s just like moments of...I mean, since...

Paula: Well sometimes it would be while we were watching football. And something would come up and then we’d talk him through it. He’d sit and go oh, I can’t believe that, can’t believe that. And you’ve had a few little emotional moments, haven’t you?

Victor: That’s...yeah, we...

Paula: Saturday, was it? Last Saturday...

Victor: Last Sunday.

Paula: Last Sunday, sorry, was the first time Vic and Rob [son] had been back to football.

Victor: Oh this...this is what happens, right. Have you ever been in the Olympic stadium? Right, it’s quite a nice stadium. At either end are these massive video screens. And our football team, West Ham, we play there, right? And what the club does, at the last home game of every season they put a montage and they play sombre music. They put a montage up of all the supporters that have passed away during the past year. Quite often big pictures, not little mosaics, big pictures. And it’s very, very nicely done but it’s incredibly sad. It’s incredibly sad and when they started playing this, I thought I could have been on that. And I looked at Rob, he’s in tears and then we both broke down, a couple of times that day.

But we had a fantastic day. That day was great because Rob felt he was never, ever going to go to football with his dad, ever again. And we had pre-match socialising to do with friends, with lunch, and then we had post-match, with other friends. And the whole day was fantastic. But at various stages of the day, I broke down, on more than one occasion. Just silly little things.

Paula: But I think that’s when it’s, sort of, it’s really hit home to him.

Victor cherishes the memory of when he and Paula went to a friend’s house when the visiting restrictions lifted.

Victor: I’m back in the game. We’ve got this lovely photograph, on the phone. I tried to get it printed up, but it... This was one of the best days of my life. It was when I was well enough to go out and it was...some of the Covid restrictions had been lifted...

Paula: Yeah.

Victor: ...which enabled us to accept the invitation from friends to go round and have a cup of tea and a cream cake, right? But what was nice was putting nice clothes back on again, rather than just sit around like this or with a scruffy tracksuit on. But that’s...I tried to get that printed up but it didn’t come out very well. It looks good on the phone. That’s as we were about to leave. We were only going round our friends’ for two hours. We ended up round there five or six. And that’s...that day, there, just being smart again. And compared to a couple of weeks previous to that I look a million dollars, compared to what I looked like. That’s a nice memory, a really nice memory. Yeah.