Back to work, back to reality

Quent is back at work. He is on a “back to work plan” which means he builds up the number and length of days gradually. He’s on two short days this week, one at home and one in the office (Swindon).

This is a good time to say how grateful we are to Allied Telesis for their support and patience over the past 3.5 years. Canada Life, the income protection insurance company, has also been brilliant. Their representative, Katy Wright, first visited Quentin in December last year, when he had recently returned to work after his lung operation. It was a dark time for us, as we had just found out that his cancer had returned. Katy arrived like Mary Poppins. She told Quent he had gone back to work too quickly and for too many hours. Quent and I were quite drained afterwards – we hadn’t really realised how much we were struggling until the professional outsider came and took a look. Katy has drawn up the back to work plan for the next 13 weeks and we feel we are in good hands.

In many ways, Quent is looking forward to being back at work – and of course it’s a real sign of recovery – but nonetheless, it’s a bit of a shock to the system.

Oakley has started one day a week with a childminder as a result – she has three dogs and also looks after Anna Sophia, his friend from school, so he’s delighted.

We did have some bad news last week. Philip, our IL-2 friend has a cancerous lymph node again. He starts another course of IL-2 later this month, three years after the first lot. He’s absolutely dreading it and we can understand why, but it’s good stuff and we hope it does the trick again.