Brit TV writer Dominic Minghella (Doc Martin) has recounted a harrowing personal experience of being hospitalised for five days with coronavirus symptoms. In a lengthy and moving blog post, publish…
executive Minghella charts how he developed symptoms but initially resisted the reality of getting the illness.
We spoke to Minghella this morning and he told us, “There was no doubt it was Covid19, but I had two tests which didn’t confirm it. I heard of a guy on the same ward who had to have three before it was confirmed. No idea if the tests are faulty, or there is some other problem. I had a CT scan, the results of which they gave me to take home, and it’s all “consistent with Covid 19″. With my symptoms the doctors were in no doubt.
Five days in, still no real fever or cough. But I was beginning to feel seriously tired. My eyes were closing at the dinner table. We decided to pull the kids from school, but mostly because we were worried about catching the virus – not because we thought I already had it. The ambulance crew thought I was okay. They couldn’t hear anything in my chest. But even with oxygen support, my “sats” were low. The crew took me to nearby King’s. King’s now seems to be wholly given over to Covid. There was a long wait. My crew were told all the other “blue call” patients were like me. And the ambulances just seemed to keep coming.
The noise was spectacular, like being in an episode of ER with full surround sound, with relentless bleeping and digital alarms, some from my own monitors, and some from others. Announcements on the PA. Staff shouting. Patients shouting. Night wore on, and the discomfort was spectacular too. I was on a trolley, not a bed, and I could not find a way to stop my lower back screaming with pain
My way-station ward bed seemed to have been forgotten about. Others came and went. After perhaps 12 hours I was wheeled out. I thanked a young nurse from Lancashire – she’d provided most of my care with diligence and compassion – from the bottom of my heart, and I knew I would remember her name for the rest of my days.
The way-station ward was a commandeered private ward. I had privacy and quiet. After the tumult of A&E it was luxury. Out of the window was scaffolding and a building site, with no sign of life, and no sky. I felt horribly cut off. At least in A&E there were people. Masked people whose personalities I could not read. But people nonetheless. I knew which I preferred: people. But I also knew I needed rest. I tried to get some.
There is only one reasonable conclusion: assume the worst. I have to write my farewells to my children. Really. Now. With whatever energy might still remain. I am exhausted, but I disconnect myself from the oxygen mains, and find my laptop. There isn’t much power. I start with my youngest, Rosa, 11, and begin the lamest of loving celebrations of this fine young lady.
I put Pusheen on my table. Every time to the door opens I tense, ready to be moved to the ward of the weak, the open-plan coughers, the tragic losers. I have ear plugs from home. I don’t want to hear the coughing. I don’t want to overhear the nurses’ conversations. I’ll need to block out pity and demise. They won’t help me cling to life.
My volunteer eventually finds the CT scan office and quickly wheels me in. About 15 people look up to see us coming and scream in unison, “Not in here!” I’m infectious and she is wheeling me into their office. The doctor and his juniors appear again. I learn the second test also didn’t work, and the CT scan I suppose was a way to confirm diagnosis with a detailed look at the lungs. Apparently my lungs show all the signs associated with Covid, with an extra layer of “scrunched upness” – “It’s as if you’ve been suppressing the cough.” “I think I have,” I confess, “on the basis that if I don’t cough I don’t have Covid; and if I don’t have Covid, I can’t die.
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