Rabbie Burns framed it better, but sometimes fate just steps right in to deal a mortal blow to your best laid plans.
It happened on Sunday evening 6:15 pm. The penetrating cries of a dog in pain made me run outside. It was the younger of our two, just arrived back from a walk. While no-one was looking, an unidentified sharp object had cut into his heel. It bled, we bound it up, it stopped. He rested, ate, then rested some more. Around 11 pm he got off his bed and the bandaged wound exploded - blood gushing, no let up. The vet said bring him in, they kept him overnight, allowed him home briefly and re-admitted him yesterday for an operation to repair two sliced tendons. Aftercare is two days absolute rest, then regulated exercise on a lead for who knows how long, in parallel with six weeks' intensive physio and laser treatment.
Returning to the theme of the title, the best laid plan in this case was a three week trip to the USA for my wife and I - together, even - the first such in four or five years. And the catalyst for the trip was my receipt, in February, of tixagevimab in one buttock and cilgavimab in the other buttock. They don't tell you which mab goes into the left and which into the right, but Evusheld is the mixture and antibodies is what it delivers. An undocumented, possibly undesirable, but probably inevitable side effect of Evusheld is how it changes the recipient's attitude: a definite nudge in the direction of invulnerability. For is not the point of Evusheld "prophylaxis" - literally the advance guard, keeping Covid at bay for a good six months we're told.
So, armed with the Evusheld ring of confidence (and the road map to antiviral treatments in the back pocket) we obtained our US visas, booked airline tickets, arranged a couple of business and social meetings en route, and recruited house-and-dog-sitters from willing friends. In the USA, our relatives booked a large holiday house, a couple of hotels and a deluxe rental car. Departure: May 29, return: June 21. But...
The new situation is beyond the capacity of our dog sitters, and besides we want to be here for our dear dog. So fate has decreed. The holiday is cancelled. The flights must be cancelled. Accommodation etc too, if possible at this late stage. Nobody is amused.
In the past when fate has appeared to conspire against me, it always turns out later that fate actually knew what it was doing and the outcome was, in the end, by some convoluted route, for the best. This level of consistency can only be explained by the presence of an ever-watchful guardian angel - a kind of celestial, all-purpose prophylaxis with a personal interest in my well-being. I wonder if, in the current situation, she/ he has ruled that the efficacy of Evusheld against current variants in circulation is not up to scratch.
And though an astrology/ heavenly portent sceptic, I find it odd that in the early hours of Monday, while our dog's vet was fighting to stem the bleeding, the Earth's shadow was passing across the lunar surface, culminating in a "blood moon".
2nd evusheld
Covid vaccine frequency
Evusheld and Paxlovid Issue
