A survivor’s tale: How I almost died of Covid-19

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For the past eight days, Ken Njeri has been in an intensive care unit at Kenyatta University Teaching, Referral and Research Hospital fighting for his life.

He narrated to the Sunday Nation his near-death experience with Covid-19:“The previous day, I had gone to town to check on my business since I had just reopened. I got home late around 6pm, took a banana, and I felt a heartburn. This was unlike me. Bananas are my favourite fruit.So I took medication and it stopped. In the night after supper, we had berries and the pain came back. My wife being a pharmacist, got me some painkillers, the pain reduced and I slept.I also had a fever like none I had ever had before.

The next day, the pain was on and off. I went to the nearby hospital, some tests were done including H-pylori, and the results were negative. I was given some antibiotics and I apparently became weak.I started having a persistent cough with a temperature of 39 degrees Celsius.

The doctor advised that we test for Covid-19. To my horror, it turned positive.That was the beginning of the bad news.

By the time the results were out, I could barely breathe. I was placed on oxygen and rushed to Kenyatta University Teaching, Referral and Research Hospital.

At the ICU, I was seeing things scurrying across the floor that weren’t there, and butterflies and beds appearing and disappearing.

My body suffered and my organs were not spared either. The doctors had to work really hard to keep me alive.On Thursday, I was discharged from the hospital ICU to the general ward. My life was saved.

The last samples have been taken and I am hoping that I am safe from the virus.Though I feel better now, I cannot walk very far, my limbs are not very strong and I am still a bit weak.

Surprisingly, I do not know how I contracted the disease. My family has not been affected and they are still fine at this point. It is very difficult to tell where you could contract the disease.

In my house, I was the one ensuring that everyone observed hygiene by cleaning and sanitising the door handles but I am the one who has suffered the most.

If you can observe the measures, ensure you do before you get yourself in the intensive care unit.

”The recovery path has many challenges. For many people, the lungs are likely to recover, often within months. But other problems can linger and some people may never make a full recovery, experts say.

One benchmark is a 2011 New England Journal of Medicine study of 109 patients in Canada who had been treated for acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS, the kind of lung failure that afflicts many Covid-19 patients.

Five years later, most had regained normal or near-normal lung function but still struggled with persistent physical and emotional issues.On one crucial test — how far patients could walk in six minutes — their median distance was about 430 metres, only three-quarters of the distance researchers had predicted.

The patients ranged in age from 35 to 57, and while younger patients had a greater rate of physical recovery than older patients, “neither group returned to normal predicted levels of physical function at five years,” the authors wrote.

The patients in the study had ARDS from a variety of causes, including pneumonia, sepsis, pancreatitis or burns. They had a median stay of 49 days in the hospital, including 26 days in the ICU and 24 days on a ventilator.Among other things, patients may have trouble going back to their jobs.

Doctors have found that nearly one-third of 64 ARDS patients they followed for five years never returned to work.

Some tried but found that they couldn’t do their jobs and stopped working altogether, and others had to change their occupation, specifically for a job that’s less challenging and probably less pa

By Sunday Nation

The post A survivor’s tale: How I almost died of Covid-19 appeared first on Kenya Satellite News Network.

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