Laszlo

Age at interview: 46

Brief Outline:

Laszlo was put into an induced coma because of Covid. When he came out of the coma he was concerned about PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and depression. However, he has not experienced this. He thinks that this is because he talks openly and shares his experiences with others.

Time of interview October 2021

Background:

Laszlo is Hungarian and works as an ICU nurse and educator. He is married with children.

More about me...

Laszlo first heard about Covid in December 2019. His first impressions were that this was going to be an isolated epidemic in China. As he puts it, “We thought China is pretty far away from us. We are safe.” Laszlo became concerned that the pandemic was coming to the UK when the virus spread to Italy. His immediate thoughts were with his patients and job, given that he works as an emergency medicine nurse.

When the UK came under lockdown, Laszlo explains that he felt somewhat safe given that he was relatively young, wore PPE (personal protective equipment), and was abiding by the government rules. Laszlo also felt like he could have had Covid and had no symptoms. So, he was confident that he was protected.

In April 2020 Laszlo tested positive for Covid. At first Laszlo did not feel sick or even have many symptoms. Again, he felt confident that his body would fight the virus. However, Laszlo quickly became unwell. He found it difficult to breathe, had a high temperature, and had a severe recurrent cough. Laszlo used a pulse oximeter which showed that his oxygen levels were dangerously low. At that point, Laszlo told his wife, “This is a no brainer. We need to call the ambulance.”

Laszlo found it a bit strange being a patient in his own workplace. However, his colleagues were very welcoming and encouraging. Laszlo felt like his life was in no danger and was confident that he would recover.

Laszlo was eventually transferred into the intensive care unit. He was not improving. If anything he was getting worse. The doctors made the decision to sedate Laszlo and put him into an induced coma. This was done at a separate hospital with specialist equipment. Laszlo’s family was told he had about a forty percent chance of surviving. Laszlo does not remember feeling peaceful during the coma. He said he had many unpleasant dreams.

Eventually Laszlo was pulled out of the coma. He was free from Covid but had a long journey to recovery ahead. One worry was potential psychological distress, PTSD, and depression. However, Laszlo feels like he has not experienced much of this, primarily because he talks openly about his experiences.

Laszlo was shocked to find that his oxygen levels were so low when he measured them with an oximeter.

One of the things that we have done on the very first day of our self-isolation, I’ve placed an order online for a pulse oximeter [because that was the only equipment that was missing from our set of home equipment that we’d been using to monitor our vital signs. And we thought measuring our oxygen level would be crucial to know exactly what is our current state. So, we’d been expecting that to arrive in a few days, unfortunately, because of the pandemic and the lockdown put a lot of pressure on online companies and Royal Mail. This little device arrived only a week after we have placed the order and so I was self-isolating already for a week and I felt that my condition is declining so rapidly.

I was I was really doubting myself that I’m going to make it just by staying home. So, when this little pulse oximeter has arrived, we put it on my finger and I was I was shocked to see that my oxygen level were around eighty percent, which was way below even for, way below normal even for someone who has a respiratory condition such as COPD or asthma. Then, when I started walking up the stairs, those oxygen levels went even lower down to approximately sixty-five, seventy percent, so that was the moment when my wife said, “This is a no brainer. We need to call the ambulance.”

Laszlo was moved from CPAP onto a mechanical ventilator and then onto Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO).

I had been transferred to intensive care, where they have started a non-invasive treatment. And for approximately two days the doctors tried using this method to increase my oxygenation level and to improve my overall condition. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen, so I felt I felt terrible, to be honest. Probably, also using a mask which blows with a lot of pressure, oxygen, air into your nose and mouth that’s also something which makes you very tired after two days, and I just simply haven’t had the energy even just to sit up in my own bed.

And to be honest, this was the moment, this was the last memory that I had from my own hospital. And what I am going to tell you now is a recollection of my story heard from my colleagues, from my doctors, from my family. So, the very same day, I was put to deep sleep into an induced coma using general anaesthetics and they have referred me to one of the ECMO centres in the UK. ECMO stands for Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation. Literally, that’s the last resort in treatment for covid patients. That’s an equipment literally which we can call artificial lung because you have two very large cannulas introduced either through your groin or through your neck connected to your main blood vessels and those cannulas are connected to a pump and to an oxygenator.

So, the pump is going to extract the blood from your system, oxygenate it and return it through the other cannula. Literally, the meaning of this treatment is to allow the lung to rest so that it can heal. The healing process is much more effective.

So, because there were only a few such equipment’s available in the UK, as you can imagine, there was a very long waiting list and there were only very there were only a lot of strict criteria. And thankfully, during this referral, I was able to tick all the boxes with those criteria and couple of days later, after my admission, I was accepted to be transferred to [city] to [hospital].

However, during those days, while I was intubated, I was connected to a ventilator and I was in an induced coma, my condition furtherly declined. One of the treatment methods of such acute respiratory injuries and distress is proning the patients, so turning on their tummy to open up the airways even more. And I know that my colleagues were very concerned, and the doctors were very concerned that, whenever they have turned me on my back, my saturation levels even with one hundred percent of oxygen were dropping to some insane levels like thirty, forty percent. This is why when they have decided to connect me to the ECMO machine, the lead consultant handling the surgery called my wife and told her, “I’ll be very honest with you. Your husband has only forty percent chances of surviving this procedure because he will not be on his back for a certain amount of time and, because his oxygen levels are dropping significantly when he’s in this position, we are not sure if he is going to make it.” As you can imagine, no one would like to hear such news, so I really admire my wife having the strength and having the ability not to fall apart, not to have a mental breakdown but to but to keep believing, keep hoping, keep praying and waiting for me to go through this and to see me again. This was this was just amazing. So, just to make things probably, how to say, even worse, the team told my wife that, if she would like to call a priest, this would be the time. So probably, this is again, not something that you would like to hear but, clearly, she was she was clinging to every piece of hope, every piece of faith and she remained strong. She knew that this is her only option to remain strong.

So, the surgery was successful. There was an ambulance coming from London to take me there and the prognosis was that very likely because of the damage that my lungs had to suffer due to this infection, it’s very likely that I’m going to spend two, three weeks at least on these life supporting machines and after that, who knows how long in ITU and who knows how long in rehab.

So, the prognosis was that I, that that if I’m going to go through this very hard and difficult process, it’s very likely that I’m going to spend a lot of time in hospital. [um] So when I had arrived to [city], it was twenty ninth of April and as a surprise, actually, even the doctors were unable to give a logical, rational explanation for this but in about five, six days my condition has improved so rapidly that they were able to disconnect me from the ECMO machine first. I think it was fifth of May when they have done a trial disconnection to see if my lungs are going to function well and they are going to process the gas exchange without having an artificial lung without providing oxygen for the blood. But I think the first trial failed but then on sixth of May, it was a successful disconnection from the ECMO, and I have been woken up.

Laszlo was clapped out by the staff, who were also his colleagues.

So, when I was leaving the hospital after nine days, my line manager decided to invite as many colleagues as possible and to line them up on the corridor so that they would clap me as I’m as I’m leaving. And I told my line manager, “I would like to do something to somehow express my gratitude towards them, to give back a little bit of the big love that I have experienced over these past weeks.” And well, clearly, we have took off the list the option of hugging them or shaking hands with them because clearly, we’re still in lockdown and quarantine. So, I said, “I’m going to do something else. I’m going to.” Oh yeah, that was the other surprise that I was planning to do.

So, they were expecting me to come out in a wheelchair and probably to be rolled through the corridor, everyone clapping and I’m leaving and that’s it. However, I said, because I was strong enough, I said, “I would like to come out in a wheelchair and then surprise them by standing up.” And I stood up from the wheelchair. Everyone was so surprised and then I went to each one of them and saluted them as a sign of gratitude for everything that they have done for me. Clearly, I hadn’t realised that there are going to be more than a hundred people and that corridor was very long. So, I was roughly halfway through, when I thought, okay, maybe I was over-estimating my own energy and power but still it was it was it was very nice to do this gesture and it was it was just amazing to leave the hospital like this.

Laszlo told his story many times to increase awareness of the risks of Covid.

I said to myself, when I was, as everyone else, I was asking myself question, why is this happening to me? Why me? I’m young, relatively young, healthy, I have no pre-existing medical conditions. Why I ended up in such a dramatic state. And couple of years ago I read a book in which the author says the, a very important thing which I’m remembering very vividly, namely that when something bad is happening with good people the question that you should ask is not why it is happening to me but the question you should ask is now that this happened, what am I going to do about it? And I said to myself, I’m not going to anchor myself into this horrific experience but I’m going to see in this whole thing. And I said, if my story can be an inspiration to other people, if my story can be a warning to other people, then I’m going to use it as often as possible.

So, I said to myself, I’m going I’m going to go on social media. I’m going to respond to all enquiries from television, radio, newspapers, whoever would like to hear my story.

I’m going to speak on conferences. I’m going to speak or anywhere that they will invite me simply because I felt that so many people, first of all, need a lot of hope because especially in the second and third wave we have seen with the high number and, unfortunately, within my family and circle of friends I had a lot of people not surviving this pandemic. And sharing the kind of hope, sharing the kind of willingness to carry on was so good with a lot of people and on the other hand, telling people my story in a way to express the kind of warning that if this could have if this could happen to me, it could happen to you so take all the precautions. So, when we had only the face mask and the social distancing and washing our hands, I’d been telling people that by wearing a mask don’t look at yourself as a as a victim. Look at yourself as a hero because what is common in heroes, most of them are wearing a mask and they save lives, and this is exactly what you would do when you put on the mask. Maybe without knowing, you save a life or two or may hundreds of lives, or you can make a big, big change in a lot of people’s life by avoiding a possible transmission.

I’ve done the same thing when the vaccines become available. I was backing up this campaign and one of my social media posts was, for example, showing a picture of me back in April 2020 with an oxygen mask on my face and I put the inscription, this was six days after I was tested positive with Covid-19 and another picture from January 2021 completely healthy and smiling and I said, this is six days after I got my vaccine. So, I was I was trying to promote this message that this is the way out of this pandemic by adhering to these measures, by taking the vaccine and this is not just for our own benefit, but we have the kind of social responsibility for others. And it was it was so good to hear a lot of positive feedback from people, from people that I know or even don’t know telling me that, “I’ve took the vaccine because of you.” “I took things more seriously because I’ve heard your story.” And when I when I started receiving this kind of feedbacks, I thought to myself that, and this might sound very weird, that I’m kind of like thankful that I went through this experience. I feel lucky and blessed that I’m alive and still I have a story to tell, and I can make a difference in a lot of people’s life. And looking to this whole experience like this, it’s it just it just puts a smile on my face. I’m not sad. I’m not depressed. I don’t have flashbacks.

I’m not suffering of PTSD. It just makes me happy that through this horrible experience I was able to make a change not only in my own life but hopefully, in hundreds of other people’s lives as well.