COVID and Me – My Personal Story part 3: Back to Reality

This is the transcript of my YouTube video "COVID and Me – My Personal Story part 3: Back to Reality". 

Before I pick up the story from where I left it, I’d like to say that I’d be genuinely interested in hearing from anyone who spent time hospitalised with COVID especially anyone who was put on a ventilator to find out if there are any similarities to my experience.  I also wish to warn viewers that discussion of life on a COVID ward can be triggering; I know this from personal experience because just having to remember what happened to me has triggered me and I’m not covering the experience in great detail.  Finally, you will get the most of this account if you watch the entire video.

To say that I was close to giving up would be an understatement.  I had been away for weeks being experimented on and the only two people who mattered to me, my ex-wife and my mother, didn’t know where I was.  I wasn’t thinking straight and I was visibly distressed.  A voice called out across the side ward, telling me that I shouldn’t worry, that they’ll find me and we’d be reunited.  It was the voice of the man in the bed diagonally opposite mine.  He reassured me that not all was lost and told me not to give up.

The man’s name was Peter and he became my anchor to reality.  I had been in a delusional state for several days and I needed someone to act as a rock to cling to in this reality or I may have drifted back into fantasy.

It’s amazing how quickly someone can become a friend under stressful circumstances especially for someone like me who finds it hard to make friends at the best of times.  I have people in my life that have spent years on my ‘acquaintance’ list because I don’t use the word ‘friend’ easily but Peter became my best friend within days.  I don’t want to offend my other friends or acquaintances, it’s just what happens under such strange stressful situations. We bonded over our shared love of movies – golden oldies and various others – and our admiration of The Goon Show.

Over the course of the next couple of days Peter helped me back to reality.  We shared personal anecdotes from our lives and we offered each other comfort when the other started to succumb to despair.  Peter was older than me although how much older I couldn’t tell you but he spoke of how he thought that COVID was a punishment for what he did during the war.  Peter had demons that rivalled my own in intensity and number so it was very easy for me to empathise with how he felt to a certain degree.  He was seemingly nervous to tell me that he spent time in military prison when they found out he was gay and he seemed genuinely relieved that it didn’t make a difference to our friendship.  To have someone a relative stranger be so open despite his unease with the revelations he was sharing made me feel even more honoured.  It’s possible that he thought he wasn’t going to make it so chose me to be a confessor of sorts, to unburden his soul before the end.

During the time I was on the side ward with Peter, we conversed on a number of subjects including the nursing stuff as they went about their duties.  We even started making plans for when we were discharged.  We started compiling a list of movies for a movie marathon weekend at my place and I told Peter that he could have my bed while I slept on the sofa during his stay.  Such plans cheered us both up while we continued to be pumped full of medication and having swabs rammed so far up our noses that it appeared the nurses were trying to lobotomise us.

Things looked up when I got a phone call from my ex-wife and she dropped off the first of several care packages for me including stuff that I probably shouldn’t have had such as chocolate bars but the doctors and nurses didn’t seem to mind.

During one of his blue moments Peter said that he wished he could taste chocolate once more before he died so I made sure that my ex-wife included a couple of his favourite chocolate bars in the next care package.

The regular phone calls from my ex-wife, the care packages and my friendship went a long way to raise my spirits and in turn I helped Peter cope even though he had more to celebrate than I did as he was mobile enough to go to the toilet on his own and I was bedbound.  Things reached a kind of equilibrium until we got the results of our latest COVID swabs. 

I got a negative result and Peter was still showing positive for COVID.  The rules stated that as I had had my first negative test result, I had to be moved to a single side room by myself.  I didn’t want to leave my friend alone because I was worried that his mood might deteriorate without our conversations.  I tried to get the doctors to let me stay on the ward with Peter but to no avail and I was taken to the side room.

I spent the next days alone in that side room with only the occasional nurse coming in to give me meds, check my vitals, take blood and bring food and a TV that only showed BBC News on a loop with no sound and subtitles.  I was able to actually watch something with sound for four hours during the morning for free but otherwise it was pay to watch and I couldn’t get the thing to work properly.

I had only my own thoughts to keep me company and after so long desperate for human contact and having it snatched away from me when I was moved from the ward Peter was on, I became lonely although I put on a brave face for the nurses.  On top of my loneliness, I was suffering with hand/eye discoordination.  I was unable to pour water from the jug I had into the cup without spilling most of it over the table and I was even having trouble drinking without dribbling water down my front.  My eyesight was blurry and I didn’t have my glasses with me so reading wasn’t an avenue for entertainment I could take.

After one of my phone calls with my ex-wife, she arrived with a care package for me that included a portable DVD player, a number of DVDs for me to watch and my glasses.  I still didn’t get to see her but just knowing she was out there caring for me raised my spirits.  She included a couple of her Laurel and Hardy DVDs that really helped me and gave me a love of Stan and Ollie that I hadn’t previously had.

Time still didn’t seem to work right as I lay in bed unable to get up so I’m not sure how long it was before I got a visit from the physiotherapists to get me on my feet again but it was a visit that knocked my confidence.  I was made to sit on the edge of the bed and gingerly put my feet on the floor, my legs promptly crumpling beneath me as I put my weight on them.

After about half an hour I was able to shuffle around with the aid of a walking frame.  I never felt so old and frail and to think I was only 49 at the time.  I was informed that the physiotherapists were planning to transfer me to a rehab ward for seven days following my discharge from the COVID ward which only served to depress me further.

My friend Peter showed off by coming round to my room for a visit with a nurse.  He wasn’t allowed to enter the room but it was a pleasant surprise that did me the world of good.  I reminded him of our plans for the movie marathon upon our mutual discharges from the hospital and we laughed about having a race to see who’d be discharged first.  That was the last time I saw Peter.

I had no intention on staying in the hospital for any longer than I had to so I spent the weekend doing as much exercise to build up my strength as I could to the point that I could get around using just my walking stick.  I did so well that, when the physiotherapists came around on Monday, they told me that I wouldn’t need to be transferred to a rehab ward.

My ex-wife brought me another care package on the Sunday morning.  It was a generous but ultimately pointless gesture because on Monday morning, completely out of the blue, I was told that my latest COVID swab came back negative and I was going to be discharged that day.

While I was waiting for my discharge papers, a Critical Care nurse came to see me and asked if I’d like to know what had happened while I was away with the fairies.  Considering a nurse had said hello to me the day before and had to explain that she was the nurse who brought me onto the ward from A&E when I first came in because I didn’t recognise her, I jumped at the chance to fill in some blanks.

The Critical Care nurse sat with me for about half an hour going through the details, most of it news to me.  I had been wheeled round to the COVID ward from A&E where I was put on a standard oxygen mask to begin with but, as my condition deteriorated, I was moved onto a CPAP machine.  Apparently, for the three days I was on the CPAP machine, I was lucid and having conversations with the nurses although I kept on having panic attacks and tried to remove the mask several times.  I ended up having to be sedated, intubated and put on a ventilator in Critical Care because, according to my medical records, my oxygen saturation level got as low as 44% at one point.

I remember her telling me that I developed sepsis and that my heart and lungs stopped working which sent me into a confused state for a moment and I began to cry, not because I fear death but because I still imagined that I would have died with no one knowing where I was as my delusional experiences were still very much part of my reality at that point.

My medical records from that time show that I did suffer a respiratory arrest but, as that doesn’t necessarily mean that your heart stops as well and I can’t find anything in the records about my heart stopping, I can only tell you what I remember the nurse telling me.  The medical records mention “respiratory arrest” and “ongoing respiratory arrest” but that’s it, however, my ex-wife told me that during a phone call with a doctor or nurse while I was sedated, she was told that I was clinically dead for five minutes. 

The only mention I can find of the word “sepsis” is in the Critical Care nurse’s write up of what she told me but that doesn’t mention respiratory arrest or heart and lung stopping either.  A conversation with another nurse in 2021 suggests that a couple of the symptoms mentioned in the medical records indicate sepsis but I have no real proof other than inference.

The nurse told me that I was at a higher risk of getting Chronic Kidney Disease although she didn’t tell me why but my discharge summary mentions “AKI” which is acute kidney injury.  My discharge summary also doesn’t mention sepsis or respiratory arrest either.

I mentioned my memories of being experimented on but she told me that those delusions are quite common although she didn’t comment on the whole globetrotting stuff.

After the Critical Care nurse left, I spent the next few hours waiting for my ride home.  I collected together as much chocolate and biscuits as I could, put them in a bag with a note containing a farewell message and my contact number for Peter and left it with a nurse to deliver as I wasn’t allowed that far into the ward with positive cases.  I did notice that Peter had received his first negative test result and that pleased me no end.  I could imagine our movie marathon already.

When the driver arrived to take me home there was some dispute over the amount of bags I could take with me because the rules were a patient and two bags but the nurse on duty convinced the driver to accept the extra bags I had.  I managed to repack everything into three bags so it was more acceptable and I was wheeled out of the hospital, bundled into a waiting car and rushed home.

I had my first breath of fresh air in about a month and I even had the strength to carry all my heavy bags from the car to my flat however I would pay a heavy price for it the next day but that’s a story for the next video.