Transcript: 'It is possible to be tired and in pain and happy at the same time'

This is a full transcript of the Cabin Fever podcast 'It is possible to be tired and in pain and happy at the same time' as first broadcast on 14 September 2020 and presented by Natasha Lipman

[music]

JADE - Sometimes I'm actually sleeping 14, 15 hours a day, easily.

JO - It is possible to be tired and in pain and happy at the same time.

JADE - For me, I feel like Covid has kind of destroyed my life to a point.

JO - So if there was a magic pill I could take that would fix all of my symptoms I don't know that I'd take it.

[Jingle: Ouch]

NATASHA - Hello, and welcome to Cabin Fever from BBC Ouch. I'm Natasha Lipman, a BBC journalist who lives with a handful of chronic illnesses. The last few months have been incredibly tough on us all as Britain and the world has faced the COVID-19 pandemic. When it became clear that people were starting to develop debilitating symptoms months after contracting the virus I began seeking out their stories. Some of the long term effects they told me about sounded remarkably similar to those that I, and many of my friends with chronic illness, experience on a day to day basis, including debilitating fatigue, brain fog and dizziness.

I want to make it very clear that we are absolutely not claiming that COVID long haulers are definitely going to develop specific chronic illnesses. There's still a lot to learn about the lasting implications of Coronavirus, but in the meantime, many people who were considered too mild to go to hospital, but whose lives have been turned upside down months after contracting the virus have reported that they're struggling with little access to personalised care and support, and are wondering what this means for their lives going forward.

Some are turning to existing chronic illness communities for advice on issues, from pacing to mental health management, and what it's like living with a long term health condition in 2020. And that's something that we wanted to explore today. I'm joined by 32 year old Jade Gray-Christie who contracted the virus back in March, and Jo Southall, my own occupational therapist, who lives with chronic illness herself. Jo teaches self-management skills for those living with pain, fatigue and poor mobility. Thank you so much for joining me today during this heatwave on our very responsibly socially distanced call. Jade, can I start by asking you about your experiences with COVID?

JADE - I first had suspected COVID back in March, March 16th. I always say that it kind of started off in a way as having heartburn and it kind of just gradually started to build, and then it got painful and then it started to kind of… The pain started to travel through my throat, and then I just increasingly just started to just feel really unwell. By, yeah, I think it was by 16th, 17th or so I was then just not able to get out of bed. I was starting to struggle to breathe, I was coughing continuously throughout. I had quite a low fever and it just progressively just got worse and worse and worse.

I felt really scared because I didn't know what was going on and there wasn't much information obviously about COVID at that time. I'm obviously somebody that's asthmatic as well, so I was even more quite concerned in terms of breathing. During, I think it was probably the second or third week possibly I called 111 and obviously explained my symptoms and just said, "I'm really struggling to breathe at the moment. I'm constantly waking up gasping for air. I'm quite scared, as I live alone and there isn't anybody. If anything happens to me, at home nobody's really going to know what's gone on."

They sent the ambulance through and they spoke to me through my bedroom window and basically said, "Yes, you've got the COVID cough, it definitely sounds like you have COVID. We're not going to be able to take you because, one, if you come in you could possibly infect other people. Obviously there's a lot of vulnerable people, maybe some cancer patients etc. Also because you're young basically you will get over it."

I was left I think just laying across the bed. I was quite shocked. I was really upset because I was just thinking well, what am I supposed to do? We were told not to attend A&E either with any symptoms, to kind of stay put, so I just ended up staying at home and I just got really unwell. I had people bring me little bits of shopping in for me but I wasn't really able to cook and I couldn't stand to do anything. I wasn't able to properly have a shower or anything like that whatsoever. The only thing that didn't kind of happen is I never lost my appetite, I continuously ate. Quite often I had to order quite a lot of food to eat as well because I was unable to cook. You know, I kept eating so when I was awake I would still eat.

And I think it must have been in March and April I was I was off from work throughout and wasn't able to obviously go to work, wasn't able to do anything and then towards May I started to feel a bit better and I thought okay, COVID's kind of gone now and I was able to kind of move around again and then I decided to go back to work.

Going back to work was fine because we were still working from home so everything was obviously done via Zoom. I think towards the end of June I got this overwhelming fatigue all of a sudden, and I was due to attend something for work. I remember I had to call my manager and just say, "I'm really sorry, but my chest has started to get a bit tight again. I'm really, really tired." And then that was it. Throughout June, July I came right back down with being unwell again. The fatigue was horrendous. I'm used to being tired because I work two jobs I've always. You know, it's a completely different tiredness, but this type of fatigue was not being able to actually physically get out of bed. Your limbs feel so weak and feel really, really heavy and then the chest pain started again and the breathlessness.

So walking from the bedroom to the bathroom was a struggle, and walking from the bedroom to the kitchen was a huge struggle, but just to not be able to kind of… To struggle to walk from my bedroom to the bathroom or the bedroom to the kitchen was actually quite scary to be honest. Since then I've just been developing more and more, more and more issues, so the fatigue has got really bad again, so sometimes I'm actually sleeping 14, 15 hours a day easily. The breathlessness has been horrible, so walking to like the top of my road or walking to the shops, just I'm having to sit and having to sit on a wall or something to kind of catch my breath.

And then the chest pains kind of start as well with it. It's just been a whirlwind, like a rollercoaster, up and down constantly. You almost don't know what you're going to be like the next day, so when you go to bed it's kind of a bit like, well how am I going to be in the morning? Am I going to be able to get out of bed and make a cup of tea? For me I found it incredibly difficult because, one, obviously living alone and, two, because I was a fit and healthy person. Walking to the shop or going to do any of my day to day activities has never been an issue. I'm someone that was going to the gym regular as well, so I was quite fit.

For me, I feel like COVID has… At this point it feels like it's kind of destroyed my life to a point, without that sounding too exaggerated, but that's how it's made me feel. I'm still getting the chest pains. I've started to get issues with my ears, a few episodes of fainting. I've been told I've got to pace everything so if I'm going to try and do some housework usually you might Hoover, mop and do everything. I'm having to do one thing at a time, so having to maybe Hoover on that one day and then the next day, maybe mop, and then the next day… And for me I'm not used to that at all, I'm used to just doing everything that I need to do.

And I think also just having to be inside the house all the time and just feeling alone with it, feeling quite isolated away. You know, people sometimes kind of almost, they don't mean to question you but their sense is, you know, "Oh, you're still unwell. How come you're still unwell? You're not better yet. Most people get better in two weeks," and it's like, well, no, they don't get better. Not everybody gets better in two weeks at all. There are lots of people that are still going through this long hot COVID. Mine's now come down to long COVID now because it's been is been going on since March, so I'm in five months. Next month will be six months.

COVID isn't just respiratory, it affects every other part of the body. It's affected me mentally. I started to like kind of breakout in my skin, which is not something, you know, I've always really looked after my skin, always drunk lots of water, and ever since having COVID my skin's just gone really crazy. Due to obviously not being able to exercise and do the things I'm used to doing I've put on a lot of weight. Also having to stay away from friends and family as well because at some point you still don't know if you're contagious and to be around people so you end up having to spend quite a lot of time alone, and I think the other hard part as well is that mental stimulation of not being able to work. I love the work that I do and I love my jobs. I think the first two weeks or so I was like, okay, this is a nice little break, and kind of sit and watch telly and stuff, but I think five, six months on I've definitely had enough now and I kind of just, I just want my life back, I just want to go back to being the person that I am.

NATASHA - And with everything that's been going on for you what kind of support has been offered?

JADE - I have been quite fortunate in the fact that the doctors have kind of listened to me, but I kind of feel like the reason why I've had the support is because of my asthma. I have to be honest, I feel like if I didn't have that then I'm not sure I would have received as much support as I have. I've been referred to the COVID Clinic at UCL. They were amazing. My doctors have been quite supportive and saying, you know, that I can contact them and let them know how I'm doing. Yeah, they've been quite supportive. My doctor had been quite honest and saying that he doesn't really know how to help, he doesn't really know much. You know, when I've kind of said, you know, "I'm really worried you know, am I ever actually going to recover from this? Am I going to get myself back? Is Jade going to come back?" And it was just one of the things where he was just quite honest and kind of said he doesn't know.

NATASHA - And Jo, that's probably something that you've heard quite a lot, not being able to find answers. So from your perspective where should COVID patients start trying to make sense of it all? And maybe you could start by talking about the specific challenges that COVID patients are facing right now.

JO - First I'm going to start by saying there's a lot of overlap between long COVID patients and my usual client group, and that's people with all kinds of complex chronic illnesses. When COVID first came out I made a note and kind of said to myself I'm expecting a whole lot of people to not recover well from this, and it's probably the first time in my career I really, really, really wish I was wrong, but the diversity of symptoms people are dealing with was a real shock to everyone. The fatigue, the dizziness, the pain, migraines, joint pain, jaw issues, ear, nose and throat issues, it's been a really, really diverse mixed bag.

Although there are commonalities, it's been very different between each person. One of the key problems is that COVID is a really sudden onset. Normally for chronic illnesses what you get is months or years of gradual symptom build up until you kind of look back and your old life is basically unrecognisable. But for COVID patients it's been a really sharp turn around. They woke up one morning feeling a bit rough and then a couple of weeks later when they expect to get better they don't. The other issue is we don't yet have pathways and guidelines to go down for treatment. Often for conditions there's a set of kind of rules and regulations and suggestions that doctors can follow and that other healthcare professionals can follow to get people through this journey. So you try X, Y, Z in a certain order and then hopefully you feel better, if you don't you try the next thing.

We don't have that for COVID yet, this is basically guesswork, and although research is being done all the time and people are comparing experiences, it's very much reactive healthcare. So if somebody goes to a doctor and says, "I've got this symptom," the doctor looks up the symptom or has experience with the symptom and tries something that normally works for other conditions, but there's not really much in terms of structure to fall back on for COVID yet, and that's a really rough thing to have to live with. And it does have a massive impact on your confidence and your mental health and every aspect of your life, because your entire life revolves around learning how to manage your symptoms and you don't have the energy to do that.

NATASHA - So from your perspective what are some of the things that as a professional you would start looking into for someone in Jade's situation? I know something that you say a lot is you were never claiming to cure someone's condition but what you can work on is quality of life improvements.

JO - Yes, so I've never told anyone I'll make some better, I've never worked with anyone who was expecting me to fix their symptoms, what I look at is how you cope with those symptoms, with the eventual aim of that symptom, regardless of severity, having less of an impact on your quality of life. It is possible to be tired and in pain and happy at the same time. It is possible to have chronic fatigue and work. You just need to adapt, so my entire businesses built around my own physical needs and my needs are to be in my house and horizontal a lot more than your average occupational therapist.

Part of what I teach to everyone is what I live day to day, so it makes me a little bit more passionate about it. I think I get a little bit kind of obsessive and motivated to teach everyone, but pacing is always my starting point, and so, so often I hear about people who were told they need to pace themselves, but they are not told how to do that. It's such a lack of support and a lack of advice and actually pacing, if done properly, doesn't have to ruin your life, it should make it easier.

NATASHA - I'm going to jump in here and just say that I have been told for about a decade to learn to pace and it wasn't until I spent an hour and a half talking to Jo in December that I actually understood what pacing meant. What Jo explained to me was that pacing is something that is there to enable us to do more, and I think that is often something that can be really missing in the conversation around pacing and fatigue management. So Jo, could you maybe give us a little primer into what pacing actually is in the in the context of fatigue management?

JO - Absolutely. There's something called the boom and bust cycle, which is basically a repetitive pattern of doing too much and then crashing to recover from that and then having to gradually build yourself up. But because you crashed the day before you're then a whole day behind so you then have to push yourself too hard again. So you end up with periods of activity where you're massively overdoing it and then periods of activity where you can barely function at all. The difficulty with this is that it tends to trend downwards, so the longer you last in this boom and bust cycle the less periods of activity you'll get and the longer periods of recovery you'll need. So eventually what happens is you burn yourself out. So being pre-emptive with pacing is essential.

One of the things about pacing I often hear is that you know, I hate resting, I hate doing nothing, but I think it's a massive misconception that pacing needs to be periods of something followed by periods of nothing. Often what I get people to do is to alternate between activities. If I've been sat here talking to you guys for quite a while my brain is working quite hard, physically my body isn't doing all that much, so my next break might be to go and load the dishwasher because my brain doesn't have to do anything, but it makes my body work. So alternating between things that have a different demand on your body can be just as effective and a lot less boring than alternating between doing something and resting.

Why do you need to rest? Is it because cognitively you can't concentrate any longer? Or is it because physically you can't sit up any longer? On top of that, I like to talk about big pacing and little pacing, so big pacing is I had a busy day, so I'm going to have a less busy day afterwards. Little pacing, right down to micro breaks is actually can I take five or ten seconds and just have a sip of drink or stretch or fidget and then go back to what I'm doing. So when you press send on an email, rather than watching your inbox synch and diving right into the next one, stop and have a five second stretching break.

NATASHA - I think as well one of the things that a lot of patients are told, and I've heard this from COVID patients, and I've heard this from so many chronic illness patients too, is the importance of exercise, but obviously, especially with fatigue conditions there are so many challenges with that and there are elements to which it can feel unsafe. And something that we've talked about in the past is we completely need to reframe what exercise means. Exercise for somebody who is experiencing fatigue is not going to the gym, it's not even necessarily doing ten minutes to physio is your first point. I remember something that you said to me that has stuck with me, is that if you have been bedbound for months on end, exercise is sitting up supported by a pillow for a few seconds.

JO - Yeah definitely. And it's not just a feeling of doing harm, you can actually be doing damage to yourself. Exercise is not something that's universally good for people, particularly not the CrossFit gym kind of exercise where you go hard and fast, work out for an hour and then go home and crash out with a protein shake. Some bodies just aren't designed to cope with that. Mine's one of them. If I did that, I'd be in horrendous pain for days afterwards. So one of the things I started doing after a period of quite kind of severe health crash a long time ago was using TV advert breaks as opportunities for core exercise. So if I'm watching TV, rather than fast forwarding through the adverts I'll let the adverts play out and I'll sit on a gym ball for just the duration of the advert break, and that's it. That then evolved to using TV advert breaks for a few reps of a Pilates exercise, and I would build from there, and it got to the point where actually maybe I'd pause TV and do a few more reps and then go back to it. So exercise doesn't need to be done in this one big block.

NATASHA - Something that Jade mentioned was kind of the struggling with the mental health side of it, grieving, and that whole process of feeling really overwhelmed.

JO - To start with I'd just like to say that for somebody who's dealing with a really, really sudden onset, massive loss of function, loss of skills, lots of job roles, loss of everything, I would be shocked if you weren't struggling mentally. It's the natural reaction to the situation that you're finding yourself in. If you have suddenly lost your ability to do all the things in your life that bring you joy, I would expect you to have low mood and I would expect anxiety and I would expect depression. It's normal in response to how you're currently living your life. But I would like to point out that for most people this is the hardest part of the journey, regardless of whether in six weeks' time everyone suddenly starts feeling better or in six weeks' time nothing has changed the early understanding part where you're learning what you can and can't do, where your doctor doesn't know what to do with you, where your body doesn't respond to treatment, where you're struggling, this is the hardest part because everything is new information. You have to constantly learn what your limits are, over and over and over and over again. When you've got the hang of it it may be that those symptoms are much, much easier to manage.

NATASHA - So Jade, how have you found the experience of trying to find support and advice, especially online? There seems to be a huge amount to sift through. I can imagine there's a lot of contradictory information out there. Everyone has their own ideas their own opinions on what will help, what won't help. How are you finding that whole experience?

JADE - It is extremely overwhelming. There's so many different things that people say and suggest and tell you to do and tell you to try, and you can sometimes just be a bit like, oh, what to do. For me, especially in the early stages, I think there was a lot around, there were a lot of conspiracy theories and so on, and I was just a bit, like, well right now going through what I'm going through, this really doesn't feel very conspiracy theory to me whatsoever. And I think I felt at the early stages that I think people kind of maybe were not taking it so seriously. Somebody made a recommendation, and I can't remember who, was to contact asthma UK.

And I contacted them because obviously I was concerned about my breathing. They were absolutely amazing. They really, really supported me because at some points you almost start to question yourself and your own symptoms and think, we'll actually is this in my head? You know, am I really feeling these things? Is this something that is actually going on for this length of time? But speaking to the many hundreds and thousands of people online, internationally as well, that all said exactly the same thing, it was really, really reassuring, and it almost eased the psychological impact of it for me in particular.

The Sepsis Trust has also been amazing. They've also kind of joined forces with a lot of the long COVID groups in offering additional support, because a lot of the symptoms and a lot of the longevity of it relates quite a lot to people who have sepsis. So I've also had a lot of support from the Sepsis Trust. There's lots of videos on YouTube which kind of go through, you know, why you may be experiencing certain things, so like the brain fog, the breathlessness, the chest pains, the fatigue. So just little short snippets of information that you can kind of just watch a minute video and just kind of get a little bit of information.

I know for myself in particular, I couldn't read through it all, one, because of the brain fog, it was just too much, trying to read all that information and digest it, but just having something just in a small chunk was really helpful for me personally, not having as much family support due to the fact of shielding. Which has been really, really hard, usually my family are always around, but they're all currently still kind of shielding at the moment as well. So I haven't really been able to have that other additional support that I'm used to getting. So that's been really hard.

And also just having really good neighbours as well has made a huge difference, you know, come in and kind of checking in and if they don't see me for a couple of days they will physically knock on the door and check to make sure I'm okay and maybe come and stand in the garden and maybe just have a conversation with me. Just little things like that have made a huge difference to me.

NATASHA - I think a lot of what you were saying sounded really familiar to me. I don't know if you could relate, Jo? Yeah, she's smiling and nodding her head. I think the turning to the online community for that level of support, and it made me think a lot about what I genuinely felt was missing, for me, outside of the medical was very specifically how do I deal with relationships while living with a health condition? How do I deal with work while living with a health condition? How do people deal with education while having these health challenges? And I think that for me was where online communities really changed my life. And having these conversations with people that got it.

JO - I like to think of kind of health in general as a network. So you do need a GP and you do need consultants and you do need physiotherapists and occupational therapists, but that's not enough. You need to have somebody who understands what it's like, and somebody who's been there and done that and is living it. Otherwise, you just don't get that kind of level of acceptance, and being around other people with a shared experience is a massive part of understanding kind of the grieving journey and the emotional experience of having a massive life changing illness. Because it is a journey and you'll gradually get to grips with it and you'll think you've accepted your new normal and you're totally okay with it and then something will happen on TV that makes you realise you're missing something else.

You know it is completely normal to be kind of blindsided by emotional feelings about your life later down the line, but to start with, don't be afraid to reach out to other charities who've got experience with similar conditions. So what Jade was saying about episodes of passing out and syncope and dizziness, these are going to be things that people with postural tachycardia or syncope disorders are very, very familiar with. So organisations that deal with these symptoms will have the coping strategies that are useful, regardless of the root cause of the symptom. And it's one of the things I like best about being an occupational therapist, is that nothing I do is diagnostic based, nothing I do is specific to a particular diagnosis, it's advice on managing symptoms and situations. And those are much more universal, so it's much more easier to understand if you take the kind of diagnosis out of it almost and just get strategies that are going to help you, regardless of what caused the problem in the beginning.

NATASHA - Jade, if you have any questions feel free to ask.

JADE - I think probably thought for Jo I guess with what kind of support maybe you would suggest for myself in terms of, you know, trying to go back to work. I want to go back to work. I really want to go back to work. I'm just really a bit worried about managing the fatigue. It's not something obviously I've ever experienced before so, you know, my job can be quite stressful and quite intense, and I can deal with some really quite sensitive matters. So I kind of have to be on the point and on the ball quite a lot of the time and I'm really worried that, you know, if I'm having a day where the fatigue is really bad how I guess I can kind of manage that. I'm hoping it will eventually go away, but at this precise moment I'm not too convinced it's going anywhere just yet. So I guess it's just what support you would maybe advise with me kind of going forward.

JO - You can forward things like fidgeting and hydrating. Have a drink next to your desk if you are on phone calls. Can you stand up? Can you schedule two minute breaks between calls? Actually rather than having say, an hour for lunch, would it be better to have 15 minute breaks spread evenly throughout the day? Can we look at actually flexible working times or flexible start times? Are you currently finding first thing in the morning really, really rough? If so, can you work full day but starting at 11 am, or are there bits of your job that you can go back to you now, build your stamina up and then will add in other bits of your job later. But also things like hobbies. You know, if gym used to be a big part of your life and you're missing out on that, can we start you off with like chronic illness aimed kind of Pilates sessions in the living room, just to get you something that makes you feel like you're getting a bit of yourself back? Or are there any interests or hobbies?

So before my health took a real tank I was a rock climbing instructor, but one of the things I did when I started having a lot more time in bed was to learn nail art because I've never had nice enough nails to justify a mani-pedi. But now that I wasn't doing the rock climbing, okay I'm going to treat myself, I'm going to have a new hobby based around a change in my life. All of my friends and family know that if they come round for dinner, it's a pyjama party, because if I did a dinner party there's a lot of prep work, there's a lot of standing up, there's a lot of organisation, there's a lot of sitting in uncomfortable chairs often, whereas pyjama parties, casual laying on the sofa, no prep work, much, much easier, much less of a drain on my energy.

NATASHA - One of the things I will say as well, just on everything that Jo was speaking about, is kind of that confidence that you need to say that these are the adjustments that I need to make that can come with time. I think even in a work perspective, even though I have dealt with health issues for pretty much my whole life, it has taken the last few years to be able to say, actually these are the adjustments that I need. I think it takes time to, A, learn what they are for you, and then once you've learned what they are to feel confident enough to ask for them. Because I think, you know, especially if you're trying to fit in to a non disabled society, essentially, and you're trying to push yourself to keep up with everybody else, you're holding yourself to standards that health-wise you might not be able to it, but it's okay if it takes a while for that confidence to come to feel like you can ask for it, even with your friends.

I don't socialise very much because it takes a lot of energy from me, but my best friend knows that randomly when she is here I will say, "Okay, you can leave now," and she leaves. It will be in the middle of a thing that I'm done, or if we have people over for dinner parties I'll spend quite a lot of it in my room resting. So I usually just walk out, so if it's someone new they'll be like, "Is she okay?" They're like, "Yeah, she'll be back in a bit, it's fine," and I'll go and lie down and then I'll come back in.

JO - It's worth bearing in mind that it's not all loss with chronic illness. You do gain things, and one of the things that you gain is empathy and the ability to understand people in similar situations. I live with Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which is a genetic disorder that basically means my body doesn't make collagen very well. So I have serious joint laxity and joint hypermobility. I can dislocate most of the joints in my body, and do so on a semi regular basis. So falling over from joint dislocations is pretty much a daily occurrence for me. On top of that is chronic fatigue, chronic pain, but these are the kind of things that I live with, so I'm a part time wheelchair user. I also have visual processing issues, so I use a white cane sometimes as well, but basically a lot of that filters in to how I work and why I work the way I do, but a massive benefit of that is that the people I work with can come to me and say, "I know you'll get it and I know you understand," and they can lay symptoms out that a lot of healthcare professionals might flinch at. Do you know, we might talk about joint dislocations or kind of awkward scenarios where they've had horrendous injuries, but in a very kind of blasé and daily way, because that's how it is for us. That's our normal.

Do you know, if there was a magic pill I could take that would fix all of my symptoms I don't know that I'd take it because I think I'm a better healthcare professional for having lived all of these experiences. So post COVID is going to be a massive worldwide phenomenon, presumably for quite a long time. All of these people will be facing a lack of understanding in their own workplaces with their own family with their own friends, and if one of them happens to come across you in a work situation and you instantly have the ability to understand their experiences and to empathise and to make adaptations for them it is life changing.

Empathy is something that's massively undervalued in society as a whole, and it does have an impact on your work, and it does have an impact on your social interactions, but also dealing with a body that doesn't necessarily cooperate with what you're trying to get done teaches you creative thinking. It teaches you to be a problem solver. This has been life changing, but it's not necessarily all bad. It will give you skills and experiences that you can use to help other people and to use in your workplace as well.

NATASHA - That's really fantastic advice, Jo, thank you so much for sharing that, and a huge thank you to Jade for being so open with your experiences. Once we finished recording this episode and hopped off of our Zoom call, Jade told me that for the first time in months she felt hopeful for the future, which honestly made me really emotional to hear and it really shows just how important it is for patients to receive the right kind of information and support, because ill health can touch every single aspect of someone's life. If you have a chronic illness, we here at Ouch would always love to hear from you. You can email us at [e-mail]. You can find us on Twitter at BBC Ouch, or you can search on Facebook with BBC Ouch. You can also subscribe to the Ouch podcast on BBC sounds. Remember, Ouch have some great podcasts to listen to if you want to take some time out or have some company when you're taking a gentle walk. A recent episode called 'Did anyone else miss sex during chemo?' explores dating online when you have cancer. Even if you've never tried online dating before, it's hilarious and it will definitely have you laughing out loud, something I think we could all do with a little bit at the moment.