Me and COVID – My Personal Story Part 1: How It Began

This is the transcript of my YouTube video "Me and COVID – My Personal Story Part 1: How It Began".

There are events that are so impactful that your life becomes a matter of what came before and what came after.  This isn’t just a personal thing.  It’s something that can happen to a town, a country or even the world.  The event may be something positive, like getting married, or something negative, like getting married.

2020 gave us an event that created a watershed on both the global scale and, for some of us, a personal one after which our lives would never be the same.  The event was the COVID-19 pandemic and this is my personal survivor’s story.

When the pandemic hit I joked that I’d know if I caught COVID because it would kill me.  I was wrong about knowing if I’d caught it but I was very close to being right about it killing me.

I have been a martyr to chest infections since 1998 after a bout of pneumonia contracted in Florida shortly after I got married.  After that I caught colds and ‘flu very easily and they tended to get bad very quickly and stick around for longer so I was obviously worried about COVID.  When the Johnson government finally ordered a lockdown and put all the COVID rules in place, much too late of course, I followed the guidelines on safe distancing, personal hygiene, etc to the best of my ability.

The wearing of masks proved impossible for me because, on the one occasion I did wear one, I suffered a troubling panic attack as it triggered a post traumatic stress response from an earlier incident in which a neighbour tried to choke me to death when I answered the front door one night.  Other than that, however, lockdown was a breeze for me.  I had spent so long locking myself away in my flat that it was second nature.  That said, I ended up having to go to the shops more often because people had been panic buying essential items and no one was answering the phone in any of the local shops to check whether the required items had been delivered.  The streets were fairly empty so I was able to cope with the small amount of people I was forced to meet.

My ex-wife was advised to stay at home on furlough rather go to work being as she was in the high-risk category for catching COVID.  This was a situation that continued from the start of lockdown until September when she was forced by the school she worked at to return to work or be sacked.  The government had not issued definitive advice to schools regarding people like my ex-wife and so she returned to work, not wanting to lose her job.  This was a disastrous move for both of us because, in October 2020, a member of staff went to work carrying COVID into the school.  She was on the reception desk so everyone passed her as she shed viral loads of COVID on everyone who entered the building.  She didn’t report being positive for COVID until a few days had elapsed and by then she had infected my ex-wife who, like myself was unable to wear a mask.

My ex-wife had been dealing with legal matters concerning her inheritance since 2019 and, because she doesn’t have a computer, a landline or broadband, she was making video calls to Florida using my laptop in my flat.  Not knowing she had been infected, she came to make another call to her lawyers handling the financial matters and walked the virus right into my flat.  We had both been observing all the guidelines and yet we both ended up catching COVID.

A couple of days later I started exhibiting symptoms.  A national newspaper had produced a table of the symptoms of colds, ‘flu and COVID so that people could identify what ailment they had, given it was the beginning of the regular cold and ‘flu season.  According to the table, my symptoms resembled ‘flu as I didn’t seem to have any of the common COVID symptoms so I took some cold and ‘flu remedies and thought nothing of it.

The over-the-counter medication I took had no effect so I took the unusual step of calling NHS 111 to confirm whether I should be worried or not.  Obviously, they thought that it was ‘flu as well but they decided to send a non-emergency paramedic team to perform an examination which turned out to be a life-saving decision on their part.  The team arrived and, noting my low oxygen saturation level, they decided to take me to the local hospital.  I was given some time to pack some things in case I was to be admitted and we left.

On the way to the hospital, my oxygen saturation level continued to drop and they became increasingly worried.  It was the late hours of 17^th October when we arrived at the hospital and I was left in a wheelchair in a room off the A&E Department with my possessions on my lap waiting for a nurse to formally admit me.