Letter No. 256
Dear all,
FEBRUARY Katie and I had tickets to see Queen with Adam Lambert in concert at Suncorp Stadium the night after I arrived back from South Korea. The forecast was for a wet night so we went prepared for rain but had no idea how bad it would actually get. Unfortunately, the heavens opened just as we arrived and there was absolutely torrential rain for the rest of the night. People a bit further back were undercover and therefore remained dry, but we had fantastic seats right at the front of the stands, out in the open, and got soaked immediately. The rain was so heavy it was like being in a shower all night with the water full on. It was not fun. Queen continued bravely on with an amazing concert, under hastily rigged up canopies, but later described it as the wettest concert they had ever given. After two hours of this total downpour Katie decided she had enough of being wet and cold and caught the train home by herself while I was at the bar. I stayed on as I was wearing my drizabone and thought I was dry underneath, but when I got home I discovered that I was wet through as well, as the water had been dripping down the back of my neck.
The next weekend we went to Sue Evans’ 50th birthday party. Sue and Jason live in Graceville on the next street to us but have a hobby farm in Boonah, so they had the party up there. There was a bus option taking people to and from Graceville, but we decided to stay in Boonah for the night and drove up on Saturday morning. It was not far from Mum and Dad’s farm so we dropped Molly off for a one-night sleepover on our way there. We drove up to Mt French Lookout first which was a short walk and a fantastic view over the wonderfully green Boonah valley, after all the rain of the previous week. Such a huge change from the drought conditions just a few weeks earlier! The bus picked us up at 6pm and it was a lovely party with a large marque on the grass next to their house, with a great meal, band, and lots of dancing. There was also a bucking bronco for people to ride which spins and bucks faster and faster until it is impossible to stay on. It is surprisingly difficult. I only gave it one try and lasted quite a long time. The operator made it buck faster or slower depending on the age of the person having a go and made it faster for the young adults which was very entertaining for everyone watching. Maybe he went easy on me. The bus picked us up at midnight and dropped us back to our hotel in Boonah. We were quite glad we didn’t have to sit on the bus all the way back to Brisbane.
On 28th February we had a work team Darts Night with partners. It was organised by one of the people in my team and around 20 people came along with partners. Katie came too. We had a three-hour booking for a darts “bay” which had an electronic program offering dozens of different darts games, keeping score and telling you whose turn was next. We were matched up by the computer into ten teams of two. Wait staff brought drinks and food to our bay and it was great fun and it never seemed like a long wait between turns. As the night wore on we all started to lose track of whose turn it was to throw next and what the score was. Lucky that the computer was doing that for us. Such a fun evening.
MARCH On Tues 3rd March Jessie caused a bit of a health scare. Katie was running a work function that night and I was driving home when Matthew called me and said that Jessie was really ill. She was comatose on the sofa by the time I got home. After a phone discussion with the local GP we decided to call an ambulance as her temperature was extremely high. They showed up about 30 minutes later and put her on a drip immediately. They asked if any of us had been overseas recently and without giving it any thought I said that I had been in South Korea 21 days ago and Matt had been there and in the Philippines 19 days ago. Things rapidly went downhill from there and suddenly Jessie was a potential Covid-19 case. The Ambos said that it was most likely that she had Tonsillitis, but of course they didn’t want to take any risks. The Covid-19 situation was very new to Australia at this point and nobody quite knew what to do or how to treat this interesting new turn of events. The Ambos phoned around to find a hospital to admit Jessie. The Wesley and St Andrews (nearby private hospitals) both refused to accept her, but Greenslopes Hospital eventually agreed to admit her.
While this was going on another ambulance arrived as the first one was just a paramedic car and could not transport anyone. Jessie was loaded into the ambulance and they took her off to Greenslopes Hospital under lights and sirens while I followed in the car. Meanwhile Katie was still at work in the middle of an event and had no idea any of this was going on. We arrived at the hospital about 8:30pm. Before we left home there had been a long telephone discussion with Greenslopes Admissions about how Jessie had Tonsillitis, but I had been overseas three weeks previously. Sadly, this information did not make it to the doctor who was treating us. As soon as he heard I had been to South Korea he backed out of the room and came back 15 minutes later in a full Hazmat suit. He made us all put on masks and move to an isolation room immediately. About an hour later he came back, still in Hazmat suit, and reported that the hospital couldn’t treat us as they only had one positive pressure room and it was already in use, so Jessie would now be transferred to the Covid-19 ward at the Princess Alexandra Public Hospital. All discussion that she actually had Tonsillitis was ignored at this point and we were left to wait for another ambulance to transfer us. I asked if we could drive ourselves (it was only 10 minutes away) but we were told that was too risky.
After another hour I told them I was just going to leave and drive ourselves so could I just have the necessary paperwork. I think they were glad to get rid of us, so the paperwork arrived quickly and we made it to the PA hospital by 11pm. I decided to take a different tack this time so I told them Jessica had already been diagnosed with Tonsillitis and needed IV antibiotics but our night had spiralled out of control due to the fact that I had been in South Korea three weeks ago. Nevertheless, we were immediately put in masks and placed in the isolation room. A nurse and doctor arrived in full Hazmat suits (again) and examined Jessica. After five minutes they announced that she had Tonsillitis (surprise) and put her on an IV antibiotic drip. By 1:30am, Jessica was feeling a lot better. The nurse said we just had to see the doctor and we could go home. Unfortunately, an emergency car accident case arrived just at that point so our doctor couldn’t come back to see Jessie until 4:30am. We were finally discharged at 5.30am with a doctor’s certificate and prescription for a course of antibiotics. Jess had managed to sleep a bit but I had not slept at all! I bailed out of work the next day and spent the day sleeping.
Matthew and I went to see Parasite on 7th March. It was a South Korean movie which had won the Best Picture at the Academy Awards. We were keen to go due to our recent trip to South Korea. It was a good movie but very quirky and unexpectedly gory. On Sat 14th March we all went to Jessica’s restaurant, Café Meze for dinner, which turned out to be our last dinner out before lockdown. Jessica really enjoyed being a guest at the restaurant rather than serving.
A few weeks earlier Katie had resigned from her job at BBC. She had been finding it challenging to manage the daily operations of an increasingly busy full-time venue when she was only employed on a part-time basis and she was also ready for a change. In hindsight her timing was excellent as she spent her final week cancelling all booked events until August. Katie’s last day at BBC was Friday 20th March. She went to the Regatta for drinks with a few work colleagues about 3pm and I came along after work, stayed for a few drinks and a snacky dinner before pouring her into the car to go home.
The next night, with more lockdown restrictions rumoured, we had a group of friends over for a socially isolated drinks night around the fire pit next to the pool. Katie made separate cheese platters for each couple. We ended up ordering pizza and it kicked on for quite a while. It was a nice relaxed evening and the last time we saw any of our friends socially for quite some time. The next night Premier Scott Morrison announced in the first of many press conferences that we would be in lockdown from the very next morning.
Jessica had another acute bout of Tonsillitis on 31st March and ended up going to hospital by Ambulance again. She went to the GP in the morning with a sore throat and was diagnosed with Tonsillitis again and prescribed antibiotics. As soon as she got home, her temperature spiked very quickly, up to 41 degrees. Katie had impending eye surgery the next day, so she was not allowed to take her to hospital and I was still at work so Matt called an ambulance. Within a very short space of time, Jessie was on an IV drip and antibiotics and was raced to the Mater Private Hospital under lights and sirens (again). There was some concern (again) about the possibility of her being put in a Covid-19 ward due to the sore throat and high temperature, but Katie explained that she had already been diagnosed by her GP with Tonsillitis just a couple of hours earlier, so things worked out much better this time. I picked her up at about 8:30pm. She is now booked in to have her tonsils removed in June due to this repeated severe reaction.
Katie had eye surgery on 1st April. It had been booked in for late April, but they pulled her surgery forward to the very last day that elective surgery was permitted in Queensland. She had cataract surgery and lens replacement on both eyes, done on the same day due to the rush. I dropped her off at 11:30am and they told me to come back at 3pm. As usual Katie took a long time to wake up from the anaesthetic (she is terrible with any kind of drugs) and we did not get out of the Queensland Eye Hospital until close to 6pm. Despite the slow recovery time, Katie was delighted with the result and said that her vision was better than it had been since she was 14. A huge success. The surgeon was extremely pleased as Katie officially had the most complicated vision problems that he had ever corrected and now doesn’t even need glasses. He is going to write a study on her for the Lancet! Katie now has 2020 vision in 2020. 😊
APRIL was really a bit of a non-event due to the Covid-19 Lockdown. Luckily I was able to still go to work, sitting in a bay of 18 people by myself. Katie, Matt and Jessie were all at home; the kids doing Uni work online. Matt continued at KWM doing Paralegal work from home, but Jessie’s waitressing was hit hard. She only got one two-hour shift per week taking phone orders and packing the takeaway food. We had takeaways every Friday night from one of the local restaurants and Katie and I played tennis most weekends. I also did lots of gardening and carpentry jobs around the house, and one of my first projects was to reconfigure the Studio kitchen into a bar. Katie and Matt had great fun planning our weekly family cocktail nights in the Studio Bar and Katie bought cocktail glasses online while Matt researched classic cocktails. Naturally, we had to wait until Jessie was legal to do this. 😊
Easter and Anzac Day were both very different this year. We usually have a birthday lunch for my parents on Easter Sunday but due to the restrictions we ended up just having Sunday lunch by ourselves. Naturally, Katie went to the same amount of effort, with Easter decorations and a fabulous slow-cooked lamb and pavlova. In the afternoon I did an Easter hunt for Katie and the kids. Katie has organised it every year but it was the first time she had done one herself since she was a teenager. Anzac Day was also very different. We all stood in our driveways at 6am. I brought out a music speaker and broadcast the dawn service from Canberra to the eight houses around us. There were people lined up all along the street.
MAY We had a social weekend when the first stage of Covid-19 restrictions lifted mid-May and we were allowed to gather outdoors in small groups up to 10 people. Our Studio Bar was the perfect venue for this so we had four consecutive nights of cocktails. Matt had six friends over for Espresso Martinis on the Thursday evening, I had a few mates over for firepit drinks and red wine on Friday night, Jessie had a girlie night on the Saturday and Katie had a girls cocktail evening on the Sunday. One of Katie’s friends brought kumquats from her tree so I played barman and made them Frozen Kumquat Martinis which were delicious.
On 20th May Jessica decided to try out her new lockdown purchase -- a pair of retro roller skates. She went roller skating on the local netball courts. She got home around 5pm with a sore wrist where she had fallen over. It got more painful as the evening went on, so we decided to get it X-rayed. We went to the Mater Public Hospital. This time she was seen by the doctor, X-rayed, diagnosed, treated and home by 10pm. She now has two fractures at her right wrist (she is right-handed). She had a half cast initially and had to go back ten days later for a full cast. The thing she was most worried about was whether she could get a black one! I have had a lot of bonding time with Jessie this year during these long hospital visits. Following her extensive research of leading Brisbane hospitals Jessie has reported that she likes Mater Public the best. Handy to know. 😊. I hope you are all coping well in lockdown. That is all for this time.
Cheers,
Derek, Katie, Matt, Jessie & Molly
