I feel as if I can breathe a slight sigh of relief. It’s been a strange 36 hours. It brought back memories of being in hospital with her when she was 10 days old and ill with pneumonia and then again when she was 10 months old and had had a febrile convulsion and on both occasions I slept on the floor next to her cot and willed her to carry on breathing and massaged her tiny chest and talked to her and tried not to cry when they gave her a lumbar puncture and couldn’t find a vein in her arm to put the drip in and every single other aspect of my life disappeared from view as I poured every ounce of myself into her. Is there anything else in life that can make time stand quite so still as that of a sick child?

Although she’s much bigger now, seeing her reduced to a flushed little crumpled heap of compliant, malleable misery is just awful and it makes no difference what age they are. When they look up at you with their hot, sparkling eyes that are pleading with you to make the pain go away, it makes you yearn for their spirited, argumentative, immortal selves again. Tending them and feeding them little sips of water and willing them to get better is a harsh reminder of how much they mean to you and how much you love them even if they make your heart feel as if it’s being slowly pulled inside out.

…and I miss my boys who have been banned from the house temporarily – it is strangely quiet without them.

My youngest child left me a note and a present yesterday and quite honestly even though I often complain about my children and about the fact that I’ve never won anything and never ever had a mention in any prize giving ceremony I’d give up even a gold olympic medal (well maybe that’s pushing it) for this every time:-

What did I do to deserve such posh chocolates I wonder and yes, I am aware that he wrote “lots of luck” first time round and then changed it to “love”. Nothing to do with me. Promise.

Just before the doctor arrived my ex husband appeared to drop off some provisions and pick some stuff up for the boys. He refused to touch anything and did a virtual body scrub with antibacterial lotion on the way out. My youngest child had bought a “Get Well” card and sweets for his sister (HOW LOVELY IS THAT?) which he went to give her, whilst at about the same time my teenage son tried to nick her laptop charger (which caused her to go mad and increased her headache ten fold) and hold his breath at the same time. He then tried on my mask and panicked that he’d got my germs so also did a ridiculous wash everywhere even up the nostrils job with antibacterial stuff. Fingers crossed that he doesn’t get it – he won’t even be allowed on the plane. I don’t know if South Africa are checking the temperature of all the passengers when they alight from the plane like they are doing in the Far East and even isolating people sitting in seats nearby, but it’s not worth the risk and think how many other people he could infect. The good thing is that because it’s the summer holidays and they generally wouldn’t choose to spend even a minute in each other’s company my older two children have not seen each other at all and my youngest child has been at school. So no close contact.

It’s all very strange being stuck at home with my daughter, having cancelled all my plans today. The world goes on without us whilst we just sit in a little oasis of calm (with a bit of vom thrown in). I feel OK today, I can’t even say I’ve got piglet flu at this stage. The name doesn’t really help though does it. You couldn’t get much worse than the word “swine” frankly – maybe “vulture flu” or “tapeworm flu” but I’d rather have “hippopotamus flu” or “dog/cat” flu or even “squirrel flu”.

The advice has clearly relaxed since the early stages of the virus in order to let the world continue doing what it usually does as they realise that it’s impossible to contain. They are not suggesting that we isolate everybody who has been in contact with her for 7 days – I mean my son was watching a heart operation on a 1 week old baby two days ago (who survived – hooray) so it doesn’t bear thinking about if he was harbouring an infection then (although because it’s passed via aerosol type droplets or touch it wouldn’t have been a threat, I don’t think).