It is a slow but steady process. For maybe 3 months.

Dig is home from hospital. He is weak, and feeble, and often makes whimpering noises. (That is my nursing lingo. Obviously, I have become a cracking good nurse! Pfft. I have picked up this nursing lark up in no time at all!)

He is still unable to do much, although some days he can stand up. Then he lies down again. Sometimes he sleeps.

He is also eating! Admittedly, teensy, tiny, weensy amounts of food. Possibly the same amount that Barbie would eat, if she could eat, and you had to serve it to her.

Now, I know a thing or two about food as well as How To Be A Nurse. Having passed through that marvellous teenage moment called, Let Us Starve Ourselves to Death (optimum weight, 6stone 1lb 5oz), I know that it is a start to place in front of the suffering one - who actually doesn't know they are starving - morsels of wondrous tenderness and beauty. Foods the patient may find irresistible. Even when they say things like, I have eaten plenty of water today. Dig's soft spots, in his present state of No Appetite At All, are for chocolate, smoked salmon, beef stock cube and kale juice. Strange one, huh? (And for him, all guilt-free!)

My other nursing duties are walking up and down the stairs a million times a day to tentatively ask, 'Are you alright? Do you want anything?'; disinfecting the bathrooms and doorhandles; taking a knife to paracetamol tablets because whole ones are too big; passing the injection thingy over to be done by the patient (I am not trusted on that manoeuvre); and embarking on missions to acquire any item, no matter how unlikely, that spark a flicker of life-force from my patient in any last hour. Such as creamed rice pudding, chocolate mousse, more paracetamol and a bowl with a handle.

But every doom-laden thunder-cloud, bearing extra-malevolent pixies with cyanide-tipped thunderbolts, has a silver lining, does it not? Then this is ours. (Or rather, mine.) He's not about to board a flight to Japan and South Korea! They're cancelled!