Dr S. Shakir Hasan,
Consultant Anaesthetist,
United Kingdom.
England has seen its worst days; past few months have been full of multiple challenges and hard struggle for the people of United Kingdom. No rules in the beginning of the current pandemic to few restrictions like social distancing and eventually implementation of a complete lockdown. To one’s surprise, the restrictions were not very strictly followed in the beginning. I have the vivid memories of the fear surrounding us all by the daily reports from Italy. We were two weeks behind Italy and expected a similar surge in UK. Fortunately we were not the first worst effected country and had some time to think and plan based on the facts and reports. A meeting was called in our hospital in anticipation, involving all the departments e.g., physicians, surgeons and nursing staff. The plan also included a short ICU training run to other medical staff in order to deal with the surge.
I felt fine till the end of March, when on waking up one morning, I felt unwell and had cold like symptoms, which started getting better on third day of illness. I thought it was just simple cold but then there was severe myalgia, low grade fever, loss of taste and smell, headache, excessive sleepiness and tiredness and mild shortness of breath on exertion. My other family members got similar complaints too, but the intensity was mild. It flashed in my mind for a moment that I had contracted COVID-19, but wasn’t 100% sure, as the COVID test was not being carried out in UK at that time, and the public health England’s advice was to self-isolate at home.
I took paracetamol for myalgia and fever but the myalgia was so severe that I had to add ibuprofen at times. I also had sore throat and stuffy nose. Headache was severe at times. I used to think that why my symptoms were not getting better, especially myalgia was literally killing me and was probably the cause of excessive tiredness and sleepiness. I was fortunate enough not to have my diet effected by the illness and was still able to eat despite of loss of taste and smell.
I was confined to bed most of the time and hoped and prayed for a negative corona disease. It took nearly fourteen to sixteen days for me to become symptoms free. It gives me great pleasure to express my feeling that it gave me a great chance and ample time to read through the researches, updates and the articles on COVID-19, and to write something on it during that period.
I went back to work after I recovered completely and have been working fearlessly since then. It was only recently (3rd week of June) when I got confirmation of my illness to be COVID-19 on getting positive antibodies in my blood. My colleagues think that I am lucky to have positive antibodies at this stage; but I have a mixed feeling and often ask myself if it is really true as it could easily have gone the other way round.
Things are much better now in UK as we are approaching the end of June with most of the restrictions have been eased off. We wish that the situation keeps on improving and we never have to face the second wave of this virus. I wish that every frontliner stays motivated, healthy and carries on with hard work till the end of this pandemic.