Just before Christmas I was admitted to hospital with COVID. I wanted to share my experience and say thank you to the amazing staff by setting myself a challenge and raising some money  

Coming out of Lockdown 2.0 on the 3^rd December we re-opened our gym and started coaching classes, my wife Annie got a migraine that night and was in bed wiped out for the following day, by the Friday she had lost taste and smell and that prompted her to book a Covid test on the 5^th Dec. Her result came back positive! At this point I had started getting a sniffle but nothing too bad. The following day (Sunday 6^th) I went for my Covid test and that same evening my result came back positive too. My symptoms were still very mild and although we had to both isolate now, we were saying “if this is as bad as it gets we’ve had a result!”!!    

Annie started getting better over the next couple of days as her symptoms faded away. For me, nothing much changed over the next 3 days, I had a dry cough and tight chest with a blocked nose, but I was still moving about the house.  However, by the Thursday things had just started to get a bit worse. The cough was now persistent which had triggered a headache and my temperature wouldn’t go below 38. I started feeling very tired and went to bed in the middle of the day and stayed there. Throughout Friday and Saturday the Covid was starting to take hold of my lungs and heart and the coughing was now at a point where it was interfering with the breathing.  As the virus attacked my system I was having to work really hard just to draw breath. By Sunday my temperature was still over 38 and my body was starting to really struggle with all the different things going on, my chest felt that someone had reached in, grabbed my heart and lungs and had started squeezing (not a sharp pain just constant pressure to the point where my heart started to actually hurt) and the 4 day headache was now quite debilitating.

After 6 hours at around 9am a doctor came in and explained what I should be prepared for. He started by telling me that there was no cure for Covid at the moment and that people were dying from it. He then went through various scenarios starting with the most positive outcome first. This is pretty much how it went……..

“If all goes well and you respond to the oxygen you could be walking out of here In 3-4 days, If you do not respond or start deteriorating further we can induce oxygen through tubes, but this would not be ideal as the body needs to be able to do it itself.  If you do not respond to this then we can put you on a ventilator and if need be we can induce a coma and keep you ventilated and monitored, beyond this point it’s all down to how your body can cope”.

I was moved to a COVID ward where I spent the next ten days having various tests.  I seemed to get worse before I got better and at one point they were giving me morphine to ease my chest pain. When the results of the X-ray came back I was informed that there had been some trauma to the lungs in the form of scaring and fluid retention. 

Evenings were the worst time as all I could focus on was breathing and trying not to cough, I had control of when I used the oxygen mask but at this stage I left it on permanently. Luckily I never got to ventilator stage.

One particular evening was extremely fraught, I was struggling to breath and it did have me wondering if it was going to take my life. To be honest you wonder how you will feel when you are on the precipice and all I can say is that for my own life I felt fairly resolved but when I thought about my family being left behind and not sure if I would see them again, this was deeply upsetting.   

During my time in the COVID ward I watched someone in my ward die during the night, saw people from various backgrounds and age groups suffering to varying degrees and the effect it at had on the carers and nurses.

Wi Fi gave me a link to the outside world and messages from friends and family were very touching and a much needed moral booster, just knowing so many people had taken the time to contact me really kept me going along with being able to wave to my 5 year old daughter through the window.  The lack of being able to see anyone and having no visitors allowed in, hammers home how serious this thing is.

Eventually over the 10 days I recovered, so I would consider myself one of the lucky-unlucky ones. Unlucky enough for the COVID virus to sneak in past my defences and affect me so badly, but lucky enough that with the medical support and dedication of the staff on Harold Ward I was able to fight back, recover and get home for Christmas.