Lessons from the lockdown

It was Monday February 3, around 10pm. The Q+A bushfire special was on ABCTV. It seems like an age ago.

Toby, my partner of 27 years, took a phone call. He froze in the doorway, his face white, his eyes like fishbowls. He’d been grappling with heart failure for a decade but he’d only been on the transplant list a few weeks. Now a heart had come up that matched him above every other candidate in Australia. He had until midnight to pack a bag and get to Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital cardiac ward.

For a fortnight, all our lives – Toby’s, mine, our daughter’s – revolved around the hospital. And when we emerged, the world had shifted radically on its axis. On the day of his transplant, there were four confirmed cases of COVID-19 in NSW. On the day he came home, that number had risen to 22. Three weeks later there were 1918 cases, and Australia was heading for lockdown.

Scientists became superheroes. The ABC’s Dr