Without Fear

You've probably read a hundred-and-one stories about people's experiences with Covid. Well, spoilers: this is mine.

To preface the main story, I have a number of chronic health conditions and used to work on the frontline in the NHS. I was scared that if I caught Covid I would be very ill. Fast forward a year and I had to give up work due to ill health - which sucked - but at least I had more control over the risk of exposure. I felt a little safer.

Monday 4th January 2021 - My husband messaged me from work saying he felt rough and asks me to book him a Covid test, which he went to.

Wednesday 6th January 2021 - Husband received a text and email at 10:30pm saying his Covid test was positive. We duly notified everyone that needed to know.

Thursday 7th January 2021 - I started to feel unwell so had a Covid test too.

Friday 8th January - notified that test failed and advised to do another asap, which I do.

Saturday 9th January - results came through surprising nobody; positive for Covid.

Over the next few days, my husband started to feel a little better while I gradually got worse. Sometime around Monday I noticed a popping and crackling in my lungs that I could both feel and hear when I breathed. Friends had done grocery shopping for us, including a pulse oximeter that I had requested, so I started checking my oxygen saturation, just to be sure.

Tuesday 12th January - I felt awful. Everything hurt; joints, muscles, skin. My chest felt so tight but my asthma seemed to be behaving so far. I was struggling with constant nausea, headache and a growing pain in my upper back. That night, I couldn't sleep. Every time I lay down the crackling and popping got worse, so I ended up sitting on the sofa all night. My temperature started to climb while my oxygen saturation started to fall; from 98% to 94% and then lower. The pulse oximeter started to let out an alarm because my levels were too low.

Around 4am on Wednesday 13th January I decided that things were a little worrying and woke my husband to warn him that I was going to call 111 and may need him to take me somewhere. The advice was swift and decisive; go to A&E now. So by 5:30am I was sat in A&E Majors, with a temperature over 30 degrees C, a pulse rate of 150 beats per minute (resting), oxygen saturation in the low 90's, raging nausea, thirst headache and back ache. I was immediately started on steroids and painkillers while a chest xray was ordered and arterial blood gases taken. Before long, I was taken to a ward and put on IV antibiotics.

A consultant came to examine me and informed me that I had Covid pneumonia and would need to be kept in for a couple of days until I 'felt better'. Another doctor came to visit and offered to recruit me into a research trial for Covid. I agreed and was randomised to receive blood plasma donated by people who had already had Covid and recovered. Within an hour I was hooked up to the first plasma bag. However, my oxygen saturation was still dropping so I was given nasal cannula and put on 4 litres of oxygen per minute. As the day wore on, with constant observations and drugs, IV antibiotics, painkillers and oral steroids, the oxygen flow was repeatedly increased until they swapped the nasal cannula for a face mask and increase the flow to 12L/min. Then 14L/min. Then the max, 15L/min.

By this point, I was having to use a small, portable oxygen canister just to manage the 20 feet to the bathroom. Thursday came and went, I had my second bag of plasma, and still I was deteriorating, not eating, in a lot of pain and hadn't slept more than about 20 minutes. Friday morning brought a bout of uncontrollable coughing which resulted in me coughing up blood. The consultant sent me to a respiratory ward where they could put me on a CPAP machine.

I was wheeled up to the very smart (I assumed recently rennovated) respiratory ward in the later evening. First impressions were good but very soon I couldnt help but notice the attitudes of the two members of staff - one more so than the other -were lacking in patience and compassion. I still had my little oxygen tank for the walk to the bathroom so was trying to maintain some semblance of independence, but the constant IV antibiotics were starting to play havoc with my insides and the trip to the toilet was getting harder and harder.

At one point, just as I had unhooked my mask tubing from the oxygen outlet on the wall and was trying to connect up to my portable tank, the male member of staff came over and started to berate me for not asking for a commode. With my oxygen tube in his hand - not actually attached to anything - he proceded to lecture me about how my going to the bathroom isn't safe. Bearing in mind that I am not getting any oxygen and my bowel was sending me messages of an imminenet emergency, I agreed that yes, fine, I will use the commode, but I really need to use it right now, could he please plug my oxygen back in and pull the curtains?

Eventually he got the message and did so, but only just in time. A few moments later he called round the curtain to ask if I'm finished, to which I replied "could I have some tissue?". I waited. A few minutes later he asked the same thing and I repeated my request. In all, I had to ask for tissue (wipes) four times before I was given any. Eventually I got back into bed, but it turned out that the commode was going to be permanently stationed by my bedside for most of my stay.

A little later, getting on towards midnight, the two staff came to me with the CPAP machine. It was unceremoniously fitted to my face with very little in the way of explanation and then they walked off and left me to it. The CPAP machine creates positive air pressure to force air into the lungs and keep them from collapsing. Unfortunately, my lungs and I were so exhausted by this point that I didn't have the strength to breathe out against the air being forced into my lungs, and if you can't breathe out, you can't then breathe in. I was essentially drowning in air. The mask was rigid and uncomfortable, obscured the vision in my only eye and dug in painfully where it had not been fitted properly. Sat alone in a hospital bed with no instructions or reassurance, I panicked. I had flashbacks to an abusive ex partner and lost all sense of reality, forcing them to take the CPAP off and give me back my mask. The attittudes of the staff towards me only worsened after this. Another night passed with no sleep.

The next morning, I updated my husband on the night's events and the shift change brought with it a lovely doctor who was kind, caring and patient. She convinced me to have another go with the CPAP but reassured me that if I was unable to tolerate it, that was fine too. I couldn't and she had to give me a mild sedative to calm me down. Later that night, a new patient was brought to the ward and started on a CPAP machine by the night shift staff. She seemed to tolerate it at first but in the midst of my first sleep in days, I was woken by the the raised voices of the staff barking at the patient like drill sergeants. She was clearly struggling and I could hear her sobbing and gasping as she tried to breathe with the CPAP in place. No more sleep that night.

The following morning, with my oxygen saturation still deteriorating despite maximum oxygen flow and a different mask, I was moved to another ward, where I was glad to find I had a single room with a private bathroom. I had been moved to a high dependency room and sadly, could not reach the bathroom as I was too ill. My friend the commode was installed next to my bed, and just using that was enought to send my oxygen levels plumetting and leave me gasping and faint. That night was like torture. No matter how I sat or laid I couldn't get enough breath. I felt like I was suffocating and I was on the verge of full blown panic. In the early hours, exhausted, sleep deprived, in pain and unable to breathe, I began looking for something sharp that I could use to end it all. I didn't want to die as such, but I needed it to stop, somehow.

As I was now in a single room, my husband was allowed to visit, albeit in full PPE. I told him how I felt and we asked to speak to one of the team to discuss other treatments besides the CPAP. We discussed intubation but it was felt that we weren't quite at that point yet. We agreed on trying Optiflow which is a machine that pumps warm and humidified oxygen into the lungs through nasal tubes at a rate of 60 litres per minute. Around lunch time on Monday 18th, the machine was wheeled in, plugged in to the wall next to my bed, prepped and started up. It was noisy and the warm, humid oxygen felt weird at first, but as the warmth spread through my lungs, it helped ease the pain in my back.

I stayed in that single room, on the Optiflow machine 24/7 until Saturday 23rd. Over the five days I got used to the weird smell of the nasal tubes, the heat of the oxygen and the constant noise of the machine. The tubes made the inside of my nose sore so I had to apply liberal amounts of vaseline. The constant IV antibiotics continued to wrac havoc with my digestive system and I watched pretty much every film I had on my ipad, but as the week wore on, I was gradually able to do more and my appetite began to come back. The team started to slowly reduce the oxygen rate on the Optiflow and my oxygen saturation stayed stable. It was a long five days and I still wasn't able to sleep for more than an hour at a time.

Friday morning heralded a milestone as the Optiflow was switched off for the first time and I was put back on the face mask at 15L/minute. My oxygen levels stayed stable, so I was allowed to continue with the mask until the evening when they put me back on the Optiflow overnight. Saturday brought an even bigger milestone as the Optiflow was turned off and taken away for good. The peace and quiet in the room was glorious. I was given a mask at first but that was soon replaced with nasal cannula and the flow rate gradually decreased down to 2L/minute. For the first time since being admitted, I was able to have a shower and wash my hair! Up until then, I had been limited to having my husband give me a wipe over with wet wipes and brush my hair with dry shampoo. I used the shower seat and was exhasuted afterwards, but the warm water and soap were divine.

Despite much coercing, the clinical team wouldnt let me go home that day, but promised that if I was stable overnight, they would consider it the next day. I was on 1L/minute of oxygen but wasnt wearing the nasal cannula all the time. I was able to move around the room and my sats were staying pretty stable. Later that evening, I was moved to another single room on another ward and I finally managed a little sleep. When the consultant found out the next morning that I hadn't needed oxygen at all over night or that morning, and that I had a nebuliser and pulse oximeter at home, she agreed I could be discharged on the understanding that I came straight back if I had any problems. At 2pm on Sunday 24th January, my husband collected me from hospital and I went home for the best hot bubble bath of my life!

For the first couple of weeks, just walking the few feet from our living room to our bedroom left me gasping for air and feeling faint, but this improved day by day until my lung function was back to near normal. I experienced fatigue and sleep took a little while to return to normal, but I am happy to say that, aside from some hair loss and unpleasant memories, I am recovered.

That being said, I will never forget that poor woman sobbing and gasping two beds down. Did she recover? Or the black shrouded bed being wheeled past the door of my room, clearly transporting someone who hadn't been as lucky as me. Or the barely hidden pain and fear on my husband's face as he sat with me, holding my oxygen mask in place as I tried to eat a yoghurt. Or the strange thoughts that swirled around my head, that felt like they weren't mine, a result of the exhaustion, sleep deprivation, fever, and drugs. Or the man I read about in the paper a couple of weeks after coming home; the same age as me, got sick on the same day, admitted to hospital on the same day, but he didn't get to go home. But mostly it's the memory of the panic and fear of not being able to breathe in a room full of air. The drawn out suffocation.

I think about those 11 days often. I remember them even when I don't want to. I am terrified of catching Covid again, but I have had my first jab and look forward to a time when I can be with the people I love again - without fear.