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Lessons learnt and personal experiences of adapting to and working<br />
Lisa Jane Field<br />
within a pandemic<br />
The beginning of 2020 started positively for me, from a professional point of view, speaking<br />
at a local conference about consultant and advanced practice, attending a ‘falls’ conference<br />
and attending a <strong>book</strong> launch following my contribution to a chapter in the <strong>book</strong>. The <strong>book</strong><br />
launch was a lovely occasion at Liverpool Albert Docks with a lovely reception for<br />
approximately 30 people. Back in the hotel I remember watching some of the TV news<br />
headlines which were focussed on this virus that had started in Wuhan China and was slowly<br />
sweeping across the globe. I remember thinking it makes a change to headlines about Brexit!<br />
However, I still did not accept that this virus was on its way to the UK and I slightly dismissed<br />
that this was not going to happen and it would all blow over. I still did not feel worried or<br />
scared about the virus, as it had not reached our shores.<br />
Personally, my year did not start well after finding that my father had been diagnosed with<br />
prostate cancer. Of course, as a family, we were all very worried after my father had lost 2<br />
other brothers to advanced stages of prostate cancer. After having a biopsy in January, he<br />
was diagnosed with very early stages of the disease that did not require treatment just regular<br />
monitoring. However, following his hospital visit he began to feel unwell with respiratory<br />
symptoms including a cough, shortness of breath and fever and rigours, and because of a<br />
sudden worsening of his symptoms my mother rang 999 for an ambulance as he couldn’t<br />
catch his breath. He was treated and recovered within 3 weeks but was this <strong>COVID</strong>-<strong>19</strong><br />
contracted whilst in hospital having his biopsy? It wasn’t a given to test all patients back in<br />
January 2020 for <strong>COVID</strong>-<strong>19</strong> and there must have been numerous patients like my father that<br />
contracted the virus before it was fully acknowledged.<br />
Valentine’s Day 14 th Feb 2020<br />
I spend my Valentine’s Day evening doing a charity bag pack at a local food store for a cancer<br />
charity. I really enjoyed meeting many people in such a short period of time (3 hours to be<br />
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