Experiences of Covid-19 and Intensive Care

Neil: I did say to work, I think I need to self-isolate, but I did say, I feel like I’ve been hit by a train, but I’ll be alright, I’ll let you know how I am in a couple of weeks after I’ve isolated. And that didn’t materialise obviously because it just deteriorated, and I ended up in hospital. So yeah, it was …golly, it was worse than the flu.

Donna: So, my daughter took him into the local hospital, and I packed up some belongings and I just said to Simon, I’ll see you soon, thinking that I would see him soon, because I never really thought it was so serious. I just thought the oxygen and whatever, antibiotics.

Zoe: I knew I was in the right place, but it’s just that you’re very aware that there’s a person in the bed opposite you, and then suddenly there isn’t. Or there’s a person in the bed next to you, and suddenly there isn’t. So, I think you kind of get in a thing of thinking, am I next? So, I found that really hard.

Andrew: In some ways when you’re on a ventilator the family has the, is going through more of a worse trauma, it has a worse time of it than the patient because on the one front the patient is having a bad time of it because they’re almost dying but we’re as, we’re asleep. So, I mean, we, you can talk about that experience and, at some point which I am sure we will. But, but you’re asleep, it’s the, the family that is worrying and concerned and doesn’t know what’s happening with their loved ones.

Shireen and Yacoob

Shireen: I was I was very emotional at that time. I was very emotional; it was hard for me to control myself. I was worried about like my children were giving me so much, telling me he will be back, he will be back, but I was quite emotional. I don't want to, sometimes my son arranged for the face time, but I don't want to see him with the seat back on the bed, lying on the bed. I was quite emotional, and I was quite worried all the time. I was crying, crying, crying, but you can't help it, you can't help it.

Yacoob: The problem is that during that time, you know, you lost, how many, his sister, four children he lost.

Shireen: So, because all this in the family it happens and all of a sudden it happens to us

Sadia: He must have suddenly deteriorated, because I got a call on that Thursday morning, to say that he was quite unwell. I think his oxygen saturations had gone very low, and I think, again, his lungs, I think they’d done an x-ray and it wasn’t looking good. I think at this point, you see this is the stage where it starts to get a bit muddy, because at this point, I think they’d spoken to my dad, and pretty much said, we don’t think you’re going to, this isn’t looking good at all for you.

Carl: think this is the thing with Covid is the fact that you don’t have hardly any human contact, and I think that’s something that’s quite hard when you’re a patient. Because nobody really wants to be near you, and you’ve got no family can see you. It’s amazing probably how much difference that makes I think. It’s just really, really lonely.

Laurence: Yeah, they brought an iPad. I couldn’t use my phone… so incomprehensible for me, I couldn’t use my phone because it was too cumbersome. So, all conversations, I think, were aimed at giving me hope to just get better and, yes, they were a real morale booster for me, and I think that’s a brilliant idea if, in the entire ward, in a situation where you cannot have your family or friends. I think if I’d been involved in a motorcycle accident or something or, you know, I’m sure that in a normal situation you’d be able to be beside your partner, holding their hand, without being covered in PPE… you know, all that gear and it would help. There's a connection there, isn’t there?

Paula: It's…and I've become obsessed with Covid, I watch programmes on intensive care units to see how other people…because I wanted to know what proning [was], I wanted to know what that was and what it entailed, so you know, I'm, you know, people saying you don’t need to know, but I do, I do need to know, I want to know what they did to me whilst I was asleep.

Caroline: There’s a story called the Starfish Story. It’s a very short one and it’s my message for all nurses is, there was a boy walking along the beach. And a man was following him, and the man saw this boy bending down every so often. And the beach was absolutely littered with starfish, and they were going to die because the sun was coming up. And every now and again, the boy would bend down, pick up a starfish and throw it back into water, where it would be safe.

And the man was really puzzled by this and eventually he caught the boy up and he said to him, what are you doing? And the boy said, I’m throwing the starfish back because otherwise they’re going to die. And the man said, but there’s thousands of starfish on this beach, you can’t make any difference. And the boy bent down, picked a starfish up, threw it back and said, I made a difference to that one.