Suffering Covid

Hello everyone, I just want to say first of all, a huge thank you to so very many of you who have sent me good wishes on the threads, or by PM. I simply cannot reply to you all, but I’ve been very touched by your care and concern and the wonderful good wishes expressed. Some of you have asked that I write down my experiences as there are some people on here apparently who still don’t believe about this terrible virus.

Well it started because my elderly mother fell and was admitted to hospital. She had sustained two small intracranial bleeds and when she was discharged home, unfortunately she had become infected with the virus during her time in hospital. She wasn’t on a Covid ward, it was just one of those things. Unfortunately we were told she didn’t need to self isolate because she had two negative tests before discharge, and so my husband went round to help her as she’s in our bubble. I had decided I would not visit, the carers could do everything but my husband is kind and rarely thinks of himself, he saw she had a need to have a table moved due to her new Walker. Well when he arrived she was already ill again and was taken back to hospital. It turned out that she now tested positive for Covid. Unfortunately in the 40 minutes he spent with her and her carer at the flat, he picked it up and brought it home to me. Both my husband and my mother, despite her great age, were not very ill at all, and neither required any medical interventions. Mum was sent off to a cottage hospital to rest, recuperate, and rehabilitate. Meanwhile I became ill, increasingly so with each day that passed. I suffer with asthma which obviously made the situation worse. We both got a test, both positive on Christmas Day. Frankly I was too ill to care. We didn’t open gifts or eat any food. I was just ill.

By the 1st of January I was deteriorating badly. I had been put into a ‘virtual Covid ward’ where I was being monitored at home for any deterioration, and my husband had to keep ringing up my sats.My son had been to the Covid Hub to collect the necessary equipment and brought it to his Dad. The main thing is something you wear on your finger and it tells you the oxygen saturation, which is the most crucial information. My saturation dropped dangerously to between 80 to 86 and it was at this point the the Virtual Ward decided I needed to be admitted. The ambulance arrived and I was taken into hospital at 9.00 at night. I had to wait in the ambulance for thee hours before I went inside the hospital. I was never left at any point, the ambulance men and also nurses, doctors and other staff were with me all the time and already actively treating and monitoring me. When I went into the hospital I was immediately taken for a chest X-ray. I was already on 40% oxygen support and I had a cannula set up and blood taken and so much active care. It turned out that I had viral pneumonia and possibly blood clots on the lungs, but I had to wait for a CT scan to discover that. My treatments were lots, anti viral infusions, anti viral antibiotics, oxygen, blood thinners, a drug to break up the fluid in my tubes which made me feel I was drowning, high dose steroids, asthma drugs delivered via nebuliser because I couldn’t breathe them in normally.