Experiences of Covid-19 and Intensive Care

I remember initially it was quite mild symptoms, the first couple of days. Temperature, just feeling…it's like a flu scenario, your body was just aching and you just didn't want to move or do anything. Loss of appetite. A little cough, not much of a cough. I never lost my sense of taste or smell. So I didn't have all the symptoms which you hear about. And then over the…about day three, four, I then started having difficulty with breathing, so respiratory issues, which is what led to me needing to get myself into hospital at the point where I was really struggling to be able to just breathe. So I'd describe it as a severe case of flu like symptoms.

So, in January I had a really bad cough, chesty cough started, and it developed, it was, hacking is the only way I would describe it. I got sent home from work, told me just to go away in case anybody else got what we thought. Never heard of Covid at that point. I don’t think many of us had. It seemed to disappear. I was okay for about six weeks and then round about the middle of March I developed the cough again. The cough came back. Gradually. It was just a kind of irritable cough. Then eventually coming into April time I experienced the hacking again, just getting worse and worse. Now, the day I got taken into hospital was the 23rd of April. Up till then I still hadn’t been to a GP. I’d phoned up, spoke to NHS. They wouldn’t test me. They told me just to isolate. At that point I didn’t have a temperature. Probably about maybe two, three days before I got admitted, which would be about 20th of April, I started to really go downhill a wee bit. Started getting hot flushes. My temperature was raised, and luckily, we had a thermometer in the house, and I was seeing my temperatures were going up 37.5, 37.8, still had the really bad cough. Starting to feel quite lethargic, a lot of fatigue.

Prior to that, at night-time I was experiencing the shortness of breath. There’s more kind of like a drowning effect. I could hardly breathe. I think I knew deep down that I had Covid because when I looked at all the information and everything that was available to me, I ticked every box. I was a bit surprised on the 22nd, the day before I was admitted, that they wouldn’t take me down and let me get tested. I found that quite strange. Considering I’d told them I’d had it for over four weeks, this hacking cough, I’ve got a temperature. But they didn’t bother.

Well, I suppose back in early March last year [2020] I was off to go skiing in France, and I went skiing in France just for a few days. This was when France, the weekend that they got locked down, so I literally came back from there on the Sunday night, a day early. On the Monday morning I felt like I had a bit of a cough, and I felt my body was all aching, a bit like flu. But while I’d been in France, I would say I was really tired as well. When I was out on the slopes I was struggling, I’d do a run, have to stop, wait for everybody, let everybody else do another run and then come back down. So, I don’t know whether that was just me or whether that was the start of it as well.

I was aware of the symptoms, but I was probably naïve to the fact of how serious it was. At the end of the day none of us should have been skiing, but it’s very easy to say that now. Loads of people were, the whole country was still working as normal and things. But it’s that thing of not believing it’s going to get you. But I knew on the Monday that I’d got it. I usually used to get a cough, if I’d got a cold, I’d get a cough and things, but it didn’t feel like a cold, it felt totally different. And my body was aching. I had a cough, and it was a cough that was affecting my breathing. I can even show you on my phone. It was just like it was just sucking up your breath. [Shows video of being breathless] That was what it was doing. I’d never had anything like that before. It was just like suddenly you were trying to find air. And when I was coughing, I was trying to bring air in, and you just couldn’t do it. I suppose that’s when my lungs must be filling up with liquid. I don’t know. Is that what it is then? You are able to breathe less and less.

So, I was feeling really…just really, really tired, a really heavy cough, shivery. And then I don’t normally get a temperature, but I was conscious of feeling warm. And I think I said to my husband, I said, ooh I feel really cold. And he said, no, you’re absolutely boiling. I didn’t actually take my temperature at that time, don’t know why, probably just both felt too ill to do it. And then it wasn’t till the ambulance came that we found out how high my temperature was. And it must’ve been like that for a good two or three days…or probably two days, sorry. And yeah, just really, I’ve never felt so ill in my life, and I’ve had quite a few different things happen in my life and, no, never felt so awful.

It was just, oh golly, just…you’re just drained. It takes every ounce out of energy out of you; even to get out of bed and to go to the loo was like climbing a mountain. You just felt everything aches, you know, your legs ache, your arms ache, everything feels heavy. And I had this really heavy, heavy feeling in my chest, particularly on my right side, it felt like somebody was sat on it.

And I did remember that from when I had my lung condition a few years ago. And I think that’s what alerted me slightly, I thought, oh this isn’t right. And then my breathing…this is, like, the night before I actually went into hospital, my breathing was very drawn and noisy, so it was like a gasp every single time and like a grunt. And my husband said, is that grunting making you feel better? I said, I’m not even conscious of doing it, I said, am I grunting? He said, yeah. I said, oh I didn’t know. And then I sort of went back to sleep and apparently was still doing this [non verbal speech] when I was asleep, which I found out later was the lungs trying to work harder to get the air in.

I realised there was something wrong with me. But because it started on the very mild, gradual…it’s like I was thinking of, yes, I am a man, I can man it up, and the government stance on the whole issue was if it’s not severe, don’t go to the A&E, I mean, just stay at home, you know? Because there are more urgent issues being adhered to or taking care of. And then with the GP as well, what they were saying was if it’s not very severe, don’t go there and bother them.

So basically, it got to a point that I’d been wondering what is going on, and all the symptoms that the government gave as regarding coughing, flu-like symptoms, et cetera, I mean, all the guidelines they gave or the symptoms that should…tell you the signs, none of them were…I wasn’t…what was happening to me, none of them was ticking the box. But it was, I think, in the second week, because I was going about my normal duties, everything was…even though I realised something was wrong with me, I was going about, you know, walking, doing everything normally. But it was, I think, in the first or second week that I realised that I’m off of food, and I’m not eating for two days.

So, then the thought now started, you know, having a look, hey, you’ve not eaten for two days, then either it’s anorexia or bulimia, something should be going wrong now for the body to be rejecting food completely. So, I went to the pharmacy to see whether probably there’s anything they could give me to probably kickstart the appetite or… So, I sent the kids to the pharmacy to do that.

But it wasn’t working, so I think in the second week, the third or fourth day, I was in the house complaining…well, I cooked for the children and then I asked them to…the third day I asked the children to, you know, feed themselves and help themselves to the [inaudible] it’s all helping me with the Zoom or whatever it is to, how do you call it, get the Zoom and change the emails for me.

It was as if…complaining you’re ill, you’re ill, you’re ill, and you’re not participating, so come, let me give you a normal medical check-up in the house, you know? Because we have most of all, I would say, DIY medical…taking blood pressure, sugar monitor, diabetes monitor, oximeter test, you know, we’ve got all the medical basic whatever. So, he started putting them on, and when he put on the oximeter, that is when he realised that my oxygen level had dropped to about 67 per cent.

So, he said, oh no, definitely there’s something wrong here. But with 67 per cent, I don’t think he could make it, it’s the oximeter which is faulty, so he took the oximeter off, and put it on his finger to check the oxygen levels. So, his was over 97 per cent. So, he tried it back on my finger again, then it was the same. So, well, he then took the opportunity to try on the other siblings, so he said, look, Dad, you’re not going to make it.

I didn’t have any symptoms apart from, I think I explained to you that when I went just to the loo, in the middle of the night, I had a little bit of tightness in my chest, which was a bit unusual for me, but not anything that I thought, oh, like, anything dramatic. So, the fact that I would find myself waking up in Resus was just such a shock. I just, I didn’t, all the things they tell you to look out for, I know my temperature was high, I think I told you that already, from the notes the paramedics had, but if you’d asked me on that day if I’d felt okay, I would have definitely told you, yes, I felt fine. So, when they say, kind of, you know, continuous cough, high temperature, you know, all the things that they tell you to look out for, I didn’t feel like any of those applied to me, apart from that little bit of tightness to my chest.

My Covid was actually diagnosed through a blood test. And I booked a doctor’s appointment because I’d had some groin pain. Imagine lifting…imagine going to bed, you know when you go to bed, you lift your leg up onto the bed? I was getting pains in my top of my thigh. And I’m thinking, why am I getting pains there? And if I was laid down on the settee and I lifted my right leg up, I was getting the pain. So, I got to the point, I actually got…strangely enough, I actually got a face-to-face appointment with the GP, who had also asked me to do a blood test. But I’ve also read that that too may have been a symptom, though…technically, it’s a joint pain. And then two days after that, I was admitted.

So, on the Sunday, I collapsed. On the Tuesday, I see the GP and I had some blood tests. I think the blood tests came back that same Thursday morning also. But by then, an ambulance was called saying that I had Covid. So, the joint pain was supposed to be a post-Covid symptom, wasn’t it? Not a pre-Covid system basically. So that’s why I’m saying as far as I was aware, there were no symptoms. The fact that I’d fainted, as far as I could see, wasn’t a traditional symptom. But they were…you know, technically they were, but not the ones that were put into the public domain. And that’s where I ended up.

Yeah. Do you feel that if there had been more attention for a wider array of symptoms that belonged to Covid, you would have acted differently?

Possibly. Possibly. But I think everybody knew that I don’t go down. My partner came in and goes, well, you don’t sound right, it’s not like you to be weak, to be down. I just [want to] monitor you. So, like I said, it’s like someone had taken out a battery and I was just like powered down sort of thing.

I work as a receptionist and a ward clerk in A&E, so for ten months, I’d been with Covid patients. I’d worked so much overtime, because there was quite a lot of absences and things like that, and I’d not been poorly, I’d not got Covid. I hadn’t had my injections by then, I hadn’t had any antibodies from it, because we had our antibody tests, so if I’m honest with you, I thought, I’m alright from this, because if I was going to get it, I’d have had it by now. I’d been in that much…but it just goes to show you about our PPE does its job, otherwise I would have been poorly before that. Yeah, so the only reason that I phoned up was because I didn’t feel good, I felt…my chest felt a bit tight, I felt poorly, I felt I needed something like an inhaler, or I needed something just to give myself a bit of a boost with my breathing.

Not for one second, not for one second, did I think I was as poorly as I was going to be, at all, and I walked in, I was out of breath, but I walked in. And I can remember being looked at, and the look, it’s only the eyes, because you can only see the eyes, the look that I got was, you’re not well, and then I sort of thought, well, I know I’m not well, but I’m not that unwell. Yeah, and then I could just tell by the people that were outside the little unit they put you in, it was like a room, they’re Covid rooms that they’ve all built, and I could tell that I’m poorly here, and it did scare me, but I still wasn’t that bothered, because I wasn’t that poorly. I still didn’t feel that poorly, and to go on a ventilator or to be like that. You’ve got to be really poorly, and I didn’t feel really poorly, not once did I think I was poorly enough for that to happen, not once, not even when they came in on Christmas Day morning and told me, not once did I think that. I still didn’t feel that poorly, yeah.

A friend of mine, their daughter’s a doctor, and they had said get the oxygen meter in. So, I’ve now since told my work and lots of other people to get an oxygen meter, which they have done, because I think if I’d had that I might have noticed perhaps oh god, the oxygen’s really low, he needs to go in sooner. Not that I’m saying it would make a big difference, because obviously with Covid it affects different people in different ways, and I’m not saying if I’d got him into hospital any earlier it would have helped. Difficult. But it’s things that go through your mind, because I have now passed that knowledge on to other people, the different symptoms, the oxygen meter thing. My work, who are a care company, didn’t even realise about oxygen meters until I said about getting a little oxygen thing, and they’ve done that now for staff who have gone down with Covid since.

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.”

Also, if I’ve got Covid my family would have had it. I’m not saying that’s necessarily the case. But my son’s ten, so he’s under that age group where they don’t seem to show any signs. I think there’s the odd child that would. My daughter would have been 15, coming up for 16 at the time. So, I believe they’ve had it, and my wife’s…I think we’ve all had it. But I did ask before that as well, I think I asked about a week before about a test and they told me just isolate, and that’s what they were doing at the time. They were just telling people to self-isolate. That was the reason, oh, don’t go anywhere, just self-isolate. So, I think if they’d been testing at the time… But you also see the other side of it now where they are testing everybody. You’re getting more figures. So, was the uptake in April or March similar to the peaks that we’re getting at the moment? Nobody seems to really know. And that’s where I think they’ve maybe fallen down a wee bit, that they didn’t have enough of these tests. But who knew this was going to happen to us? I don’t think anybody could have forecasted this.

You said that when you first contacted the NHS you had to wait more than 45 minutes to an hour to get through to people.

Yeah

There must have been, I mean how did you, what were your thoughts about your own symptoms and at that time?

I think, you know, absolutely because my wife got fever for a couple of days and she had paracetamol and she was okay, you know, she was still a little bit down but like as, or whatever and that but she was a bit down. But was okay because I think because of me I had so bad symptoms she made herself more like, let’s say okay I need to take care of this man and then she somehow got off. But coming to NHS 24 yeah the first time like I waited 45 minutes to get, and then I feel a little bit like I said like that’s what I’m doing and all, like, and that’s what the news yes everybody says keep checking so you haven’t really given me any extra information or anything. And I tried the second time which was like even longer like I was on for an hour or so because all I wasn’t very convinced you’ll like get the same thing from my wife says “no, no, no you have to, let’s try and see like what they say”, and at that time it was so long maybe like, I have the hindsight know I can think like why because they didn’t have any information for me other than that as well. So, so yeah a little bit deserted at that time because I thought like, you know, when you wait for over an hour and you get desperate and try taking paracetamol and you are doing the right thing but I could see myself I wasn’t improving at all really I was really going down.

So, that was the only thing like, you know, I was enthusiastic about that time with the NHS line like okay why can’t they say to me like okay go and see someone, go and see a doctor or we’ll call or-, or a GP call you or do something. Because I remember, I think I tried GP our local GP as well, but they just have the same thing like, “No really we can’t do anything at this moment you just have to and wait and watch”, kind of thing. And yeah I think that’s obviously on the hindsight I can see why they are saying that, I think yeah at that time it was a bit, a little bit deserted saying I’m not really getting any help.

What would have been helpful at that point?

Again, I think the helpful thing obviously is information because there are nothing prescription information and probably testing, like testing would have been fantastic that’s one of the main things which was good. I mean if you will, whether it’s manual or somehow you could test it I think that would have, that would have made a big difference because you know for yourself that, whether you were positive or negative and if you were positive then at least you know that you’re not gonna pass it to somebody because you kept yourself isolated. You know the end result of what would happen so at least you, from my point of view I could say like I wouldn’t have gone to like, you know, my family or anyone at that time. I would have as isolated, do something different please really and I think that was a big, big thing was testing I’d say like, you know, if somehow, some kit or something was there to test yourself or someone else testing for you or however it was done.