I caught COVID in January 2021. After a week of progressively worsening symptoms I had reached the point where I couldn't breathe and my finger oxygen saturation monitor was reading 86% at rest.
I called for an ambulance. The paramedics reached me in under five minutes, took my observations, and it was obvious something was very wrong — both paramedics looked at each other and made an "uh-oh" face. I was put on oxygen and told to grab my phone charger and any medications as they had to leave "right now".
I was rushed to a hospital in Surrey and taken straight to a COVID ward, where over the next two days I deteriorated to the point of entering respiratory failure. I had extensive double COVID pneumonia. I was placed into a medically induced coma, put onto a ventilator, and moved to ICU. I was given under an hour to live not long after intubation, as my heart rate went over 250bpm, my blood pressure dropped dangerously low, and my oxygen levels wouldn't come up.
Three days later I was moved to a hospital in London for specialist care. I spent the next three weeks in ICU, seven days in a coma in total and ten days on a ventilator.
After I was stepped down from ICU I was moved to a third hospital, also in London, for rehabilitation.
After I came out of my coma, it had been over a fortnight since I had seen or spoken to any of my family. I actually thought my family had died from COVID, as we had all tested positive at the same time — everyone luckily survived. Some admin staff very bravely entered the COVID ICU ward to allow myself and my fellow patients to make video calls home.
It takes an awful lot of bravery, love, and kindness to enter a ward full of COVID-positive patients in order to give much-needed contact with the outside world.
There were some large yellow clinical waste bins that opened automatically when someone walked near them. They reminded me of Pac-Man with a flip-top head.
I found it amusing that Pac-Man was eating all of the clinical waste.
I struggled very badly with delirium after I came out of my coma and became a little aggressive. I was very, very scared and had no real concept of what was going on.
One particular nurse — I'll call her Nurse D — sat with me for a number of hours, held my hand, and talked to me about everything and nothing until I calmed down. My heart rate was at one point very high (200+) and the staff were considering putting me back into a coma. Nurse D saved me from that.
I met some military personnel who had been drafted in to help in ICU. Every single person involved in my care — from a cleaner to a professor — I found fascinating.
Yes. Just before I was placed into a coma — and I know this may sound clichéd — I left my body and stood in the corner of the room and watched myself being intubated.
All of it. I find that no one wants to hear about it anymore, particularly anything that reminds people of COVID. The only people who will listen to me now are therapists.
Watching and listening to people dying around me. Watching people being taken away after dying, and the next critically ill patient being wheeled in almost straight after. I was very lucky to go home.
How quickly I was forgotten after coming home. I had spent a month being cared for by the most dedicated and loving people on the planet, but after I made a recovery I was left to manage alone for six months.
I was very lucky to have a fantastic ICU clinical psychologist assigned to me six months after I left ICU. I was in a very bad place — unable to cope with constant visions of people dying, and unable to work out if I was even still alive. She came into my life at exactly the right time and saved me.
I observed the absolute best in humanity in ICU. Unfortunately, I don't think it will be seen again.
As already mentioned, no one is interested anymore.
I thought surviving a near-death experience would be a positive awakening, but after a few weeks I realised it wasn't going to be. My ICU experience has changed me for the worse. I am no longer scared to die — I've been there, and nothing happens.
Even now, six years later, I am still in therapy for post-ICU PTSD.