Published 06/07/2020
I am sharing the story of my dad… he is 67 years old and had no underlying medical conditions before Covid-19 got into his body.
He wasn’t fat. He was happy and healthy and active and loved.
It is important to note that my dad is still in critical care as I write this, but my what a journey it has been.
My dad had a chesty cough and he felt breathless. He hadn’t left the house since lockdown began and he blamed cutting trees down. It wasn’t. It was corona virus.
10 days later he was admitted to hospital with severe breathlessness and not being able to recover. He moved hospitals and wards before being induced in a coma to save his life. The doctors told us multiples times that it is unlikely he will make it through the night. He was proned more times than I can remember and just as doctors told us he was getting better, he’d develop another infection and his life would be on the line again. It has now been 3 months in and out of a coma and my dad is ‘lucky’ to be alive. In the last two weeks, he has had a tracheotomy and now had the mechanical ventilator fully removed at last. Physically he is getting stronger
Waking up serves its own problems however. He doesn’t sleep, he cannot swallow, he cannot move any limbs and for a man who was so passionate about life and fun and happy, he is very low in mood. He has a long road ahead of him. I wanted to share his story for for those that are in limbo waiting to see if their loved one will live or die, and for those that are battling through. You are not alone. There are lots of people going through a battle, whether in recovery or just at the start.