Covid-19: a brush with death

Dedication

To NHS and social care staff everywhere. Without your constant care and attention, so many more of us would have died. I appreciate that this is what everybody says, but it’s absolutely true. I did not at the time when I was at my worst with Covid-19 realise how exhausted staff themselves must have been, many of whom were themselves succumbing and dying from Covid19.

Thank you so much to all the NHS doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, and ancillary staff. All any of you ever said was “its ok, I’m just doing my job…” Maybe you were, but what a job, and how many lives have you saved! I was, and remain so grateful for the NHS. In particular, I personally owe an enormous debt of gratitude to all the staff at Kings College Hospital London, without whose care I would not be here today.

To begin at the beginning, on 13th March 2020, I became suddenly and dramatically ill; it descended upon me overnight. Although I was concerned about catching the virus, on 13th March 2020 I certainly wasn’t expecting my health to dramatically implode, which was what happened.

Instead, it grabbed hold of me very suddenly, without warning, and I was immediately in its grip. Overnight, I had an intense, hot fever, and a dry cough, with which I was wracked all night long. Throughout this unending night, I was pursued by ceaseless dreams and nightmares. It was terrifying, hallucinogenic, and far more intense than the ‘real world’ I was supposedly living in. I felt that an unstoppable force had entered into me, using me almost as a plaything, taking me over, toying with me for the whole night, never for one instant letting me go. I had a sense that the virus came ready formed with its malignant personality.

My delirious mind was overwhelmed with nightmares dominated by the image of a commander, huge in size and scope, commanding his troops, in a battle in which they were the oppressors, and I was a helpless victim. It was no contest. This commander had a shape and a form. It was enormous, dark blue. It shimmered in front of me, monstrous and terrifying, changing its shape and outline constantly, like an infernal chameleon.

It seemed to possess limitless energy. It did not speak as such; it did not have to. There was a whirring, devastating, ear-drum-splitting sound coming from it. In my nightmare, it was the sound of the virus, which was attacking me, trying to enter me in anyway it could, a multitude of virus cells, all vibrating individually but as if they were a daemonic swarm. In my feverish mind. I felt brushed, not by the wings of the angels of death, but by the force of evil – the devil itself, descending upon me like a swarm of locusts devouring me to my bones. I felt terrified. Its energy was neither male nor female, but infinite and deadly. I felt as if it was scanning every inch of my body, looking for a weakness that could finally destroy me. The nightmare and its fears had taken me over.

I was in a deep fever; my breathing was laboured, my lungs struggling, my throat rasping, and I was increasingly breathless, gasping for air, coughing and spluttering everywhere. It felt to me that there was an intense whirling force of darkness invading me, forcing its way down my nose and throat, into my lungs, finding a myriad of ways through my increasingly non-existent defences to leave me feeling disintegrated, a random collection of formerly human fragments. It was like a black fog, wrapping itself all around my lungs and from there entering every single cell of my body. I was too weak to fight. I was in the grip of an exhaustion more profound than anything I had ever experienced. I could not move; I felt I was being strangled, and in the grip of a nightmare so devasting it felt like I was in a prison from which there was no chance of ever escaping.

This happened at home, four or five days before I was admitted to hospital, and was my real Covid-19 crisis. Throughout all the nightmares, I sensed that I was in a fight for my life. That was for sure, and that was entirely real.

Somehow or other, I did survive the night. The morning left me wrung out and exhausted, hardly able to move a single muscle. My appetite had vanished. I had an intense pungent taste in my mouth which would not go away. Physically, I could hardly move a muscle. It was almost as if I was paralysed. I strongly suspected that I did have Covid-19, as I had all the symptoms that were being reported in the media.

After about three days of increasingly desperate calls, my GPs called for an ambulance, whose staff assessed my condition, and decided on an immediate hospital admission into an Intensive Care Unit. I will always remember that when I was in the ambulance about to be driven away, my wife was just outside, watching me leave in the ambulance. Before the doors closed, we exchanged glances, saying a goodbye that neither of us knew would be temporary or permanent. What I did not know for several weeks was that my wife too had contracted COVID-19, as had my step-daughter.

I later wrote a poem called ‘The Shipwreck’ which evokes how I was feeling at that time.

The Shipwreck

Down, down, down I went, Sinking desperately to the bottom of the sea. Nothing can save me, a ruined sunken wreck, No hope of recovery, A haunted shadow of what I hoped to be Unmade, unbecome, no wistful glimpses of the sun. Crabs and scavengers crawl across my deck, Unpick my bones, And I drift aimlessly beneath sea, sand and stones, Doomed to endless slow decay, A slow inevitable ebbing away. Yet is all lost? Can my battered boat Become afloat again? Can I restore its compass To where it sailed before? Can the air, the sea spray and the sun, Become through some strange mystery, The dawning of a new day?

 After my retirement, I had started to attend the church on the hill, close to where we live, St Catherine's Hatcham.

I started to really listen to the sermons, and reflect upon them deeply. They began to make sense. This led me to write the following poem, loosely based on the 23rd psalm.

 The 23rd Psalm in the time of the pandemic

The virus stalks us, walks beside us through the valley of the shadows of death, Squeezing life from every breath. Our fears grow ever nearer, Like a huge dark remorseless blade, Scything through the cornfield of our hopes and dreams. I seem mere human leavings, scattered, Abandoned, and alone. Yet in my soul I lie down in green pastures beside still waters. I hear the lapping of the waves of a great sea Of peace, love, and beauty. Yet I weep, and fear the evil all around me. A shepherd guides this flock Of frightened sheep, Into a temporary haven, Or at least, lulls us into unquiet sleep. I do not wish to dream. Nightmares beckon to claim me back To those dark hidden regions Where legions of haunted memories wrack

Do we have a ‘Good Shepherd’ who looks after us? I do not know for sure, but I hope, and pray, so.

Back home: 'Recovery'

When I was finally discharged after about a month, I felt suddenly utterly on my own. From being surrounded by the loving care and attention of all the NHS staff, that security blanket of continual care and close monitoring had disappeared overnight, and it was just the three of us at home on our own. When I had broken both my hips eighteen months previously, there had been a programme of follow up and community support which helped substantially to aid my recovery. None of this was initially in place for aftercare for Covid-19. This was a new disease, ferocious in its impact upon individuals, their families, and the services themselves. So initially, there was nothing.

At the time, it felt as if I, indeed the whole Covid-stricken world, was in a mental and spiritual desert. I started reciting the 23rd psalm, again as a kind of mantra, seeking respite from its poetry and in its evocation of the good shepherd, who I hoped was, at some level, still present. However, it felt to me that He had gone missing in action as if he had succumbed to a vicious attack of this virus at the heart of the Covid pandemic. I am not a convinced ‘believer’; I am an agnostic tilting towards a belief or a hope that we are not entirely alone in the universe, but uncertain of the theological fine print. Do we have a ‘Good Shepherd’ who looks after us? I do not know for sure, but I hope so.

The first steps

If I was in shock, then so was my wife. She had received a telephone consultation from a hospital consultant who thought it likely she had Covid-19 too, but not requiring emergency hospital admission. So, we had both had Covid-19; probably our daughter had had it too, in that she was experiencing one of the key symptoms, the disappearance of her sense of smell and taste.

We were a household ravaged by Covid-19 and its consequences... Immediately after discharge back home, it was a real struggle, both because of her exhaustion, and mine. I was quite irritable, snappy, and demanding towards her. In these early weeks of my return back home, I don’t think I appreciated how exhausted she was; initially, I had just realised that I was. I was effusively grateful towards her all the time. The first time she made my breakfast favourite, scrambled egg on toast with smoked salmon, I burst into tears of gratitude. She was nevertheless, physically weak, and emotionally traumatised by her own experience of it. Yet suddenly, she had to take on nursing me, whilst still struggling to recover herself.

I felt I was an intolerable burden on her, at a time when she was so exhausted. It was vital that somehow or another, I had to find a way out, to make progress. I could not continue this emotional roller coaster of highs and lows: it was exhausting both of us. Gradually our relationship returned more akin to our more usual state of closeness and harmony. We had gone through so much, but mutual exhaustion from Covid-19 had accentuated our differences and separateness. Gradually, we were able to recover our sense of sharing, deep communication, love, and friendship between us. She is my lifeblood. I could not before, and cannot after, imagine my life without her; but for a while, it felt like we were throwing it away.

As for my recovery from Covid, my breathing had become very shallow, and I was still hearing a rasp in my chest. I very easily got twitches and strains in my back which was very frustrating as it meant I had simply to rest for a while until my back was pain-free again. It was a long way back, but with time, I would get there.