So, I got severe COVID-19 while I was in Liberia.
It's quite a story.
Contracted it right at the end of May and became symptomatic in early June, with fever, cough and sore throat. Because of the obvious, got a PCR test and it said negative. FYI at that point, as now, I had had my first shot of Astra Zeneca. That was a relief because the best/only half good clinic in the country doesn't take COVID patients. Because I had a false negative they thought the clouding in my lungs was something else and they said bronchitis. Gave me a load of medicine for that and sent me home. Had a few days of really horrible symptoms and then a colleague persuaded me to go back. So they admitted me. After a few days I started having problems breathing. Blood oxygen down below 80. So they put me on Oxygen. It wasn't great because they ran out of Oxygen for a while. And there were a lot of other complications like the tank didn't move and I had to take it off to go to the bathroom, which mean I would be gasping for breath by the time I was done. I won't tell all the details of how messed up the clinic was because they probably kept me alive and I don't think anywhere else in the country would have,
Around about that time my security company decided to evacuate me, so they started working on medical evacuation. I spent a couple of days sick as hell, and also got another COVID test. Because you can't get out of Liberia without one. And shortly after that I got my SECOND false positive PCR test. So they loaded me onto an air ambulance. I then lay in a tiny plastic tube for 8 hours. Just me and two paramedics, Liberia to Edinburgh in Scotland direct. Crashed hard on the plane due to the low air pressure, and they had to put me on 'Non-Invasive Ventilation'- a breathing apparatus that pretty much smashes your face with high pressure oxygen and makes you breath. Because they suspected COVID (despite the two negative tests) I wasn't allowed out of the tube. Had a chemical sock to piss in.
Got to Edinburgh, transferred to the hospital and diagnosed with COVID within about 10 minutes. Found out later it was the Delta variant. They transferred me to ICU in a specialized COVID unit and gave me countless different drugs. Apparently it had already gone after my heart while I was in Liberia but I beat that one back, but obviously it was going after my lungs, plus also liver and kidneys. I basically hadn't slept for the last 5 or so days and was delirious so they also sedated me. Next day my blood gasses got a bit worse (despite being on high pressure oxygen at the max setting) and they said if it got any worse I would have to be ventilated. Fortunately almost immediately after that my body got its shit together and apparently my Oxygen demand went down 70% in the next 12 hours. Basically I was completely immobile for the next 4-5 days, except for being able to my arms and hands. Shortly after that I was able to sit in a chair for a day, and around then they moved me to a room in a regular war in their respiratory diseases unit. I was there for around a week. Towards the end they weaned me off Oxygen (went from 4L a minute, to 2, to 1 to 0 in a day) and once I had been off Oxygen for a day they were happy to let me go. I went to my parents' place. That was about 4 and a half weeks ago.
Recovery is ongoing. At first I was weak as a kitten- I was exhausted walking out of the hospital ward and would get badly out of breath just going to the bathroom. The first few days I focused on eating a lot of food and then I basically spent 3/4 of the next 5 or so days in bed or on the sofa. After a week I got really frustrated because I was literally no better, still exhausted and out of breath from doing almost nothing. So I started doing more active rehab, walking laps of a section of the garden (probably about 15m per lap), breathing exercises and some bodyweight squats and knees-down pushups. First time I could do about two laps, and I had to stop regularly and was sucking air hard. After a week it was a lot easier to do laps of the garden so I started walking up the hill my folks' house is on. First time I tried I managed about 20 meters, had to stop three times and was bent over double at one point. A guy stopped in his car to check if I was okay. But I tried to do it twice a day and add some distance every time. I guess I progressed really quickly because after about 10 days I was able to walk a bit over a mile uphill continually. Breathing hard and heart pounding, but was able to do it.
This week my partner and I went on holiday to the Lake District. We went on two hikes- the first was about 5-6 miles with a 350m rise, the second was 4 miles, with a 450m rise all in the first hour. The second hike in particular was really hard for me- pretty much at my limit these days. It felt *really* good to be standing at the top of these hills, just over four weeks after being released from hospital, and five weeks after nearly being on a ventilator. There is still some way to go- apparently people who had severe/critical COVID like I did have lung damage that takes 3-12 months to recover from. I feel like it will be 3 months for me, but we are only one month into it so I will see.
We found out later that there was some issue in the testing lab in Liberia. Had I got an accurate test I am not sure I would have made it- they wouldn't have let me out of the country and I was basically at the limit of their ability to provide treatment. At the least, I would have ended up in a crappy Liberian hospital attached to a ventilator from the 80s that would have given me permanent lung damage.
tl;dr- Jaunty df. COVID by KO- 8-10, 8-10, 8-10, 10-9, df. in R5 by Jaunty being awesome.