Scary.
saturday march 28 2020
CORONAVIRUS | THEO USHERWOOD
Theo Usherwood on coronavirus: I gasped for life. At 38, I might never see my son again
The radio presenter reveals how over 11 days the virus crushed the breath out of him — and brilliant NHS staff brought him back
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Theo Usherwood with his wife, Romella, and son, Kofi
Theo Usherwood
Sunday March 29 2020, 6.00pm, The Sunday Times
As I lay on the hospital trolley at the Royal London, I was filled with an immense fear. About an hour earlier, as my wife, Romella, had all but carried me from our bedroom to the waiting paramedics, I had decided not to look in on our five-year-old son, Kofi. While I lay on white paper sheeting, oxygen pumped through my nose, gasping for every breath, I was gripped by a sense that I had missed an opportunity to see my boy one last time.In the emergency department the curtains to cubicle 14 were drawn. The only glow came from a fluorescent light outside in the corridor.
The A&E doctor, Marie, had already told us that I had a severe case of pneumonia and was to be admitted. It was then left to a young specialist chest doctor, Max, to treat me in the darkness before I was taken upstairs to floor 13, previously a ward for respiratory patients that had been converted into a space to treat Covid-19 sufferers in isolation.The coronavirus is an
insidious disease. It had crept up on me over the course of 11 days, slowly squeezing the air from my lungs until I was almost unable to breathe. What had started as all the symptoms of flu — aching limbs, headache, extreme fatigue — had slowly worsened. I had a severe cough, which felt as if a clamp was being applied to my chest, and painful stomach cramps.I am not by any means the world’s fittest man but I am not a slouch either and at 38 — with fortunately no underlying health problems — I would consider myself reasonably fit. But after so many days of fighting the coronavirus, I felt as if I were slowly being suffocated.
I had spent the previous evening retching up blood in the bathroom sink. After collapsing from another coughing fit, I could barely get the words out as I asked Romella to call an ambulance, knowing that for all the pressures our paramedics were under and my reluctance to use the NHS for that reason, I was in trouble and needed help.When the paramedics arrived, one of the first things that struck us both was that
I was not alone. The radio of the young man driving the ambulance crackled with reports from the control room: “Woman, 35, coughing blood. Man, 28, struggling to breathe.” These were young people, like me, desperate for medical attention. It is not, as we had believed, only elderly patients who struggle to cope with the onset of the virus.On the 13th floor I was placed in a room within a room. No visitors were permitted and I was not allowed out.
Romella told me, when she returned home after leaving me some fresh clothes, that she had listened to a report from Italy, where a patient’s relatives — if they were lucky and a doctor could find a moment — would be allowed one last FaceTime call before the patient died alone.It was, for Romella, a crushing moment to realise that if the worst were to happen, she would probably have been with me for the last time.I looked out on London rooftops from my window, waiting for more blood tests and another visit to check my oxygen levels and blood pressure. I was on my own for many hours. My difficulty in breathing made it impossible to hold a conversation for more than a couple of minutes. Were it not for the messages of love and support that I received from friends, colleagues and LBC listeners, I would have felt very alone.
For the first few days I was too unwell to reply to them, but they gave me great strength in the darkness.The restrictions placed a much more significant burden on the NHS staff. Every time one of the medical team came to see me, they had to put on the protective equipment, including the masks and plastic robing, in the anteroom outside my own room, which adjoined the corridor.
They scrubbed their hands and wrists before coming in and then again on leaving not only my room, but also the adjoining space, where they took off their robes and masks and disposed of them in sealed bins. These conditions dictated every single interaction.Despite the pressures, the wonderful nursing team — who had so much to do and so many people to see — took care of me as they would have looked after one of their family or close friends.The other aspect of the NHS that I discovered is that it can operate at a level many of us rarely witness. It had no playbook for my treatment. There was no set course of treatment to follow.
The doctors at this East End hospital were working in uncharted territory as they tried to figure out how to bring the infection under control. They were working a bit like, I imagine, the codebreakers at Bletchley Park in the Second World War, the only difference being that they were trying different combinations of drugs until, finally, I started to improve. I had been admitted on March 18 and was allowed to go home on March 23.As I started to get better, I had the chance to speak to doctors and nurses about what was coming. There is a palpable worry that they will not be able to cope. The time and space they needed to fix me would mean that the possibility of saving others would be in serious jeopardy if our hospitals crack from the number of people needing medical attention.There will, of course, be those for whom the coronavirus is simply overwhelming. My heart goes out to them and their families. But there are many thousands, like me, who can be saved. For that to happen, however, we all have to do everything we can to flatten the curve — and the peak that is to come — so that our world-leading NHS can do the job for which it was built.Now, more than ever, every single one of us has to be in its corner.
Theo Usherwood is political editor of the radio station LBCSmall but real risk to under-40s
The latest Covid-19 data suggests that Theo Usherwood was unlucky to require hospital treatment at the age of 38, and that he would have been very unlucky indeed to have died. Not every country publishes up-to-date figures by age group, but Spain reported last week that only three people died in the 30-39 age group.A recent study by Imperial College London estimated that 3.2% of symptomatic cases in the 30-39 age group would require a hospital stay; only 5% of that small proportion were likely to need critical care. Figures updated on Friday in the American state of Washington showed that 15% of the state’s 3,200 confirmed cases affected the 30-39 age group.The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that only the under-40s with serious health conditions are in danger. But Usherwood’s experience underlines the reality of Covid-19: nobody’s risk is zero.
