Subj : Updates
To   : All
From : Avon
Date : Sat Mar 05 2022 13:58:04

A bit of an update from me.

Instead of being in the South Island of New Zealand I am up in the North Island visiting my old family home. My father was diagnosed with prostate cancer a while back and has had some initial hormone treatment to shrink his prostate and then it's 4 weeks (daily mon-fri) of targeted radiation treatment to attack the cancer cells.

This has to happen in a city about 4 hours drive north of where my parents live so Dad is flying to the city and staying there mon-fri and flying home on the weekends. He's 79.

Meantime my mum (also 79) I am staying with to care for as she is unable to look after herself alone and has a growing level of dementia. So my days are full looking after her, cooking the meals etc. and I am also trying to work remotely while doing all of this. I think in truth I am getting about 4 hours of productive work time per day.

My brother (who is in the USA) is coming over to help with all of this in the next week or so as the NZ borders have just started to re-open to returning New Zealanders. So it will be nice to have some time with him for 2 weeks before I head home.

This is all set against a backdrop of a Omicron Covid-19 surge/wave that is washing over NZ at the moment. Daily cases are 20k and this is new for my country as for the last 2 years it's all largely been eliminated from NZ with our borders closed. Totals deaths since 2020 are around 54... so the strategy to date had worked well but when delta and then omicron came in it was clear elimination would not work.

So here we have a good amount of our population double vaccinated and also with a booster shot and that's helping keep the numbers in serious ICU need down to under 10 people at the moment nationally. Our hospital system is busy at the best of times and it's a public system so no need to pay for a private one (unless you want to) so the stats for ICU admissions are key for all of us to keep an eye on.

You can appreciate I am keen to avoid it, for myself, my father and my mum who is super frail and I think would be hit hard / could die if she got it.

Anywhoo that's me at the moment and likely to be this way for another 3-6 weeks all TBC...but I won't be as active because of this.

Best, Paul

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