Peoples Stories
COVID Recovery Scribe: WO2 P M Chambers – WOIC 2 Mercian LAD REME
I
am 6 foot 8 inches tall and around twenty stone (130kg give or take), anyone who knows me will testify that I’m a “Giant”. I pass all fitness tests and I’m probably the fittest 20 stone bloke you’ll ever meet (barring England RFU team members). I want to share my experience with the Corps that I love, so that it might help even just one of you get through this. I’ll be as brief as possible because I think we’ve all had enough of it, I certainly have. This article seeks to do a few things, firstly tell my story to give the benefit of my experience so that you can pass it on to those “Covid deniers” that we all come across from time to time. Also, to give you an idea of the impact it can have on not just you, but your families and finally to thank the people who got me through it. I did a lateral flow test on Thursday afternoon in the CQMS dept before heading home for a long weekend, I passed the test and headed off. When I got home, I thought my dinner didn’t taste of anything special, but didn’t think anything of it. That night I had horrendous fever, cold sweats, temperature, shivering, all the signs of a decent flu kicking in. My Wife insisted I do another LFT test even though I had done one the day before, guess what…? A PCR test hastily booked that same day confirmed I had Covid and I settled in for a fantastic 10 days of forced rest, meals in bed, films and maybe a little X-Box time. The symptoms ramped up slowly, more fever, headaches, temperature, increasing difficulty breathing until after 5 days I agreed that perhaps all the Paracetamols and Ibuprofens I had accumulated weren’t cutting it. The first ambulance said I was a borderline case and I told
Arrival at York Hospital for Triage
CPAP Treatment
18 craftsmaneditor@reme-rhq.org.uk
them I could handle it without hospital treatment providing it doesn’t get worse. They left me with strict instructions to call if I deteriorate any further. 36 hours later at 0500 in the morning, becoming delirious having had little sleep due to difficulty breathing, my distraught Wife called the ambulance, who took me into hospital with signs of pneumonia and possibly sepsis(?). I could barely walk at that point, I had neither the strength nor the lung capacity to move my body more than a few feet. They tell you that people die from Covid with no under-lying symptoms. What they fail to mention is that you need to have a reasonable level of cardio-vascular fitness to survive the treatment. If your lungs are not strong enough to manage the treatment, then it ends very badly. I’m not trying to tell a horror story, just my personal experience. The treatment for me was horrendous; The CPAP machine is basically a low-pressure oxygen pump that forces air into the airway while you are conscious (as opposed to a ventilator when unconscious). I spent 5 days and nights with a pressurised mask secured to my face. Only disconnecting for meals and toilet breaks (that’s another horror story). Undoubtedly the CPAP treatment and the professionalism of the NHS staff saved my life, make no mistake, Covid-19 was trying to take my life. The mental robustness that the military instils gave me the strength to dig in when I was suffocating in the middle of the night. This happened multiple times and I’m not ashamed to say I was terrified, I thought I would black-out and
