Just one of 59,937 on Tuesday 5th January 2021. Sometimes just writing things down, making a note, a little sketch or caricature if you are more artistically inclined, helps to make sense of things. In many ways it may just help us make some sort of order out of the experiences and feelings we have especially when they relate to events that unfold around us.
Facts are often hard to extract when interpreted through emotion. So writing this short piece is my way of helping process the past 18 days of my life. The 18 days since I joined the other 59,937 people that day who became Covid positive. This is a personal reflection of my experience. It isn’t intended in any way to paint a picture of anyone elses Covid experience. I have no right to do that.
It is different for all of us. Sometimes similar never the same. Some people have had no or few symptoms and are now happily getting on with their lives. Most tragically, not all of us got through these 18 days and my heart goes out to those poor souls and the people they leave behind. I can’t write this without thinking about them and taking a moment to pause and deal with the emotional impact that fact generates.
This short reflection is being written from a bed in a busy acute hospital that is dealing head on with the Covid-19 pandemic. I have been admitted twice this week and twice spent a night on a bed in an A\E observation room before finally arriving in the medical ward on my Covid day 17. Please don’t misinterpret this information, I have had all of my clinical needs met. I have been dealt with by some truly skillful and professional doctors and nurses who were happy to talk very clearly about my symptoms and treatment. I was looked after at all times with skill, integrity and care. I include here the nurse practitioner from the local GP practice that visited me at home, listened to my chest and monitored my blood oxygen saturation levels. She got the whole thing spot on. In the hospital I was comfortable and I was safe. Everything else is window dressing.
Covid has had its play with me and left behind a nasty pneumonia which is playing havoc with my normal oxygen saturation levels. Short of breath with the slightest activity is something nobody warned me about. Equally worryingly, Covid can have an impact on the normal clotting of the blood which in my case has left me with a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in my lung. I’m not looking for sympathy or understanding, just giving the context in which I offer my thoughts. I have no idea how I have avoided Intensive Care but 18 days in and I’m here, my spirits are still high and I feel safe. I’m in the right place just now.
It is forty years since I first started work in the NHS and by coincidence, I’m back in the hospital where my career started. Everything about healthcare has changed during that time and rightly so. This hospital has been totally demolished and rebuilt as a very high quality and impressive healthcare facility. Politics aside, it is a monument to those locally who managed to create and deliver a vision of health care for the future. It’s clear
that the new hospital has been much more than a building project. New systems, roles and patient pathways, incredible diagnostics and treatment areas. All very impressive but as you would expect, the place is under considerable pressure right now. There’s no need for political views in this reflection so I think we can just observe that by any measure, the NHS is working flat out.
Until now, I would say the only thing that stays the same is human physiology, how the body and our systems respond to illness and attack. New investigations and treatments develop in line with our deeper understanding of how the body works. The investigation of our DNA and the very make up of the cells have changed medical research. The development of the Covid-19 vaccine is testament to the amazing work and research that continues to enable scientists to directly target treatments and vaccines and is simply remarkable. Advances in cancer treatments and screening are further examples of how the science has changed not the physiology.
It seems from my personal experience that Covid has rewritten some of the rule book. The thing you don’t really see on the television reports is the sometimes subtle and sometimes very overt changes that have been made to the way clinical professionals and the support teams have adapted to new ways of thinking and working. Covid seems to work through the body’s systems creating havoc and moving on. The biggest success in the battle with Covid is happening on the front line in acute hospitals everywhere. No politics and no ridiculous references to ‘the candle of hope flickering in the distance’ which was one of the most offensive platitudes I have heard from a politician during the past weeks. The teams on the front line are learning all the time, refining their treatments and always looking for the standard treatment protocol that will help the most people. All of this will contribute to science and we know that when focussed on the problem the scientists will contribute to the treatment.
There seems to have been a huge learning curve with this virus and the clinical teams have risen to the challenge quite magnificently. The protocols in place will have been developed at breakneck speed and adapted more often on local experience at first but then cross validated as early studies throw out new conclusions. In no other peacetime situation would clinical practice and new treatment protocols be delivered in such a and effective way. More importantly, doctors, nurses and other front line clinical professionals in training have been contributing fully and personally to these developments which I believe will serve us all well for the future. Not just in dealing with this virus, but in becoming the healthcare professionals of the future.
My personal experience probably reflects a much bigger section of the ‘Long-Covid’ family than I would ever have actually realised or known about. In the early days of having Covid there are a range of not too frightening symptoms we expect to work through and we clearly expect by day 10 to be able to resume our daily lives. Beyond that we don’t all know someone who’s experience was different. Underlying conditions, age and obesity are clearly major risk factors looking at the first wave of Covid and clearly they still are.
Having now joined a group I didn’t know existed, I know that it means I got this far and I take great comfort in that. So I’m guessing that in this group there are growing numbers of people like me. In my 50’s, I train hard on a regular basis, fitter than most at my age. Last week I trained four times including weight training and a 60 minute endurance spin class. No underlying conditions and no treatment for anything until 18 days ago. Today I’m struggling to climb a flight of stairs and need oxygen until my lungs can catch up.
It’s early days but I’m Covid negative now, I have my embolism and my pneumonia to deal with. I wish it hadn’t happened but it did. I have been a competitor all my life and I’m very lucky to be able to focus my mind on what I have and what I need to do next. Early days, the pneumonia and blood clot are probably only a week old so there’s lots of recovery to get through yet. Intravenous antibiotics, anticoagulation injections daily, a course of steroids and of course oxygen. I’m safe. I’m comfortable and most importantly I’m looking forward to my next 18 days and the chance to start recovering.
I’m lucky. I have a particular mindset, close family and friends and all times this has helped me through the past 18 days. It isn’t the same for everyone. I have found it OK to just tell everyone how I’m feeling and as each change has happened I have been able to talk to someone. Even so I have had moments alone in my thoughts that upset me. This wicked disease leaves us vulnerable physically and mentally. Overwhelmingly, the doctors I have spoken to in hospital reported the difference in the current wave includes so many more people like me. Younger and fitter than back in wave one.
In normal times, I’m a listening volunteer for Samaritans and have so often over the past year been the person that answers the telephone in the middle of the night when someone reaches out for help. There are so many things we can all do to help to minimise the impact of this disease. We all know it but some people still choose to behave differently. Think carefully before you risk catching or spreading Covid. If you know someone at home on a covid journey or just forced to self isolate, take some time each day to reach out. Check in on them.
It takes very little to ask are you ok.
Samaritans are available 24 hours a day, everyday, free on 116123
