My Covid-19 Experience
Tuesday, 17th November 2020 was like any other day in my ever-hectic life. Two days before I had completed a 48km run as part of my training for the forthcoming 50km Challenge that was due in 2 weeks. Although I felt some minor joint pains as I woke up, I didn’t give it much thought and put it down to the usual post run fatigue. Nevertheless, it was still strange that this kind of niggling pain was setting in more than 24 hours after a run. At 6.00 pm later that day, I went out for a 10km run (most runner call it the recovery run – usually slow but enjoyable) which I completed but with a lot of struggle! Still recovering from the 48km run, I thought!
I decided that I would go home and take a much-needed break. However, I noticed later in the night that the joint pains were becoming much severe and my temperature had started going up. By 2 am in the morning, I had developed a slight dry irritating cough.
On Wednesday 18thNovember 2020, I woke up and the first thing I did was set up an appointment with my doctor. I checked into the hospital at about 9.30 am, explained my symptoms and the doctor decided that we should take a CT Scan of my chest. Results returned after about two hours, there was nothing spectacular. Still my doctor recommended that I should isolate and start on some immunity boosting treatment immediately, because he had seen a number of Covid-19 patients who presented like that. He also recommended a Covd-19 test, although he added that there are people with such symptoms who returned a negative test only to come back 72 hours later in a critical condition. In brief, he was saying that the Covid-19 test that I was going to take was not full proof and whether it returned negative or positive, he still wanted me to isolate and start treatment.
We discussed my options and I chose to skip the test, but instead go home to isolate and start treatment. After 14 days, I would then do a test to confirm that I am clear before returning to work and mixing with everybody. Straight out of hospital, I went home and started on the treatment (mainly antibiotics). That Wednesday afternoon, I made my office home as comfortable as possible because I knew that I was going to be working from here full time for the next 14 days. In the evening of that Wednesday, I continued with my regular daily outdoor workouts but I had agreed with my doctor that I should walk NOT run. I rarely obey doctors’ orders about running but on this occasion I did. I went out and walked 7km in about an hour.
The doctor continued to monitor me from home and on Sunday morning, he declared that all my symptoms had gone. We were all happy with the progress I had made. Those thoughts about how serious (we have all had them) this was being over hyped returned and within me, I came to the conclusion that a good body can handle this. So what’s the fuss? What remained now was to count to the end of the 14 days so that I could take a test and be formally cleared.
Just as I was starting to chest thump and declaring to whoever cared to listen that this pandemic is beatable, things changed.
A friend who had gone down with Covid-19 about 3 weeks before, had warned me that I should watch out for any changes in symptoms around Day 6 or Day 7. He had explained that things went south for him around those days. I had contemptuously dismissed his experience without telling him. I had put down his sudden change in the circumstances despite being managed by the best doctors, to his over weight and lack of activity.
At the time of contracting this disease, I was just a month shy of my 50thBirthday. I am a very active person. I run approximately 50km every week and I have never in my entire life fallen to any severe illness apart from the usual malaria. There was no way, things could get worse after the doctor had said that I had responded well to the treatment in the first 5 days. I reassured myself.
I've done a good (but admittedly, not the best) job of following the recommended health guidelines. I wore a mask in public, social distanced while I was around others, but I have still attended social functions like parties and funerals and took the occasional boda-bodaride around town when the traffic was grid-locked as it often it does in Kampala. Throughout this ordeal, the question I have hated most from friends and relatives is ‘How/Where did you get this disease from?’ It is an airborne disease for heaven’s sake. It is quite insensitive for anyone to expect someone already probably feeling guilty that they did not do enough to protect themselves, to remember that particular moment when the virus may have entered their body.
Monday morning (Day 6) was like the day before. I woke up very well. I had had a good night, no symptoms at all. I had my breakfast and went straight into my home office. Later that day at 3 pm, I started feeling a fever again, all the symptoms that had disappeared, started re-emerging. The headache set in and a dry irritating cough started. That ominous warning about Day 6 came crushing in my thoughts like a tonne of bricks. I still kept these developments to myself because I did not want my wife to panic. By 6 pm, the headache was unbearable, temperatures high (and still rising), we called in the doctor. The doctor did not show up until about 8pm. When he walked in, stethoscope in hand, he asked me to sit up, felt my chest as he asked me to breathe in and out ………….. and boom just like that he declared, ‘treatment is going to be restarted and you are going to need oxygen immediately’. I had him speak to my wife in a muted voice. “His lungs have become weak and they will have to be supported. Please don’t panic, take the oxygen as part of the treatment. In the meantime, the treatment regimen, we gave him in the first 5 days is going to be repeated but as a double dose (twice a day not once a day as before)”
The doctor gave us options. He told us that he could move the entire necessary equipment (including a Portable Oxygen Concentrator – which I saw for the first time, different from the cylinders I had seen in hospitals) or he could move us to the hospital ward, which was nearly full at the time. We chose for the equipment to be moved to the house. However, he had to be guaranteed a reliable power supply (thank God we have a generator at the house) and space for a full time nurse to monitor me 24/7. The doctor would only be coming in once a day. I could see that the doctor was going to great lengths now to make sure that every small detail is taken care of. No stone was being left unturned on this occasion! Doctors rarely show emotions, but I noticed that he had been disappointed that his patient had gone from having no symptoms at all (and even cracking jokes) to full hospitalization in less than 24 hours.
That Monday night, my Oxygen levels dropped so much (I was later told) that I needed 5 liters of supplemental oxygen from the concentrator. I spent the next 72 hours constantly on oxygen (only being taken off for bathroom breaks). Friday morning, the doctor came in and declared that there was an improvement in my breathing and that supplemental oxygen could now be scaled back to 2 liters, while I am also being totally taken off at intervals of 2 hours while am being monitored by the nurse. In the next 24 hrs, this was done and was finally and completely weaned off oxygen on Saturday night. When I woke up on Sunday morning and the nurse told me that I had slept soundly and breathing normally without supplemental oxygen through out the night, I smiled. I had finally got my lungs working again, like they should. However, I was still extremely weak. The distance from my bed to the bathroom is like 4 metres, but every single trip to the bathroom left me so drained that I started deliberately avoiding going to the bathroom until the nurse told me off. “You should go to the bathroom as many times as your body demands you to, holding things in for long may bring about other complications that we do not want to deal with now”. I had to comply much as I hated it.
Monday 30thNovember made it twelve days since I first started treatment and seven days since I was first put on an auxiliary oxygen machine to assist my lungs to breathe normally. The doctor came in that evening and declared that all IVs and injections would now be stopped and I will continue with medicine taken orally for the next few days. A sample was picked from me on 1stDecember (exactly 14 days after I first reported symptoms) and a NEGATIVE result was communicated via what’s app 24 hours later.
My experience has showed me that Covid-19 is a life-threatening virus that affects everyone so differently. There is a lot of advice out there, some useful and most rubbish. My Covid-19 experience may not be the same as yours or your next family member. It is not possible to predict with how your body will respond.
Between Day 6 and Day 12 I was given injections that make up the entire total I have probably had in the last 50 years of my life. I took more pills than I can count. Some other medication was injected into my body by IV (I think I had like 6 of these per day). I've had CT scans, X-rays taken at the end of this ordeal to determine how good my lungs are. The doctor said they were now clear and yet I still felt very weak. Going from ground floor to first floor is such a strenuous exercise, that I rarely venture downstairs unless it is absolutely necessary.
Before this, I felt and I would be described as a healthy, middle-aged athlete with no major medical conditions. Now, I'm not sure that those words can be used to describe me. My doctor has told me that I will likely not return to full strength running for a long time because of the damage to my lungs. We are talking 16 - 20 weeks of no running. That has not happened in my life for the last 20 years and more than anything, it breaks my heart that I will be in this state for such a long time.
I have however accepted this situation now that I am well again. A few people, I know have not been as lucky as I have been
My advice, please take this pandemic seriously. Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Social distance. Limit going into crowds. It is not that you will be able to totally avoid the disease but you reduce the chances of contracting it by a very big margin. I never thought that I would be affected this way, but here we are. Don't let yourself be next.
As I sign off, I am very grateful to my wife who has walked with me through these agonizing 14 days, minute by minute. I am also forever grateful to my medical team of three, Julius, Ruth and Dr. Patrick. May the Lord continue to bless the work of your hands.
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