A ZIMBABWEAN man, who was rushed into intensive care after contracting Covid-19, has opened up on how his ordeal began when he started sensing the symptoms which resulted in a collapsed lung.
Tapuwa Mataranyika is a medical doctor in South Wales and lives in the town where his hospital is located.
On this day, he had visited London together with his wife. He left his 12-year-old son with a maid in Wales. Their plan was to come back after two days.
They drove straight to Watford to see a close friend who had lost his wife to a short illness. Despite warnings not to travel, Tapuwa as a doctor believed he had taken maximum precautions. He believed Covid-19 had been highly overrated and was not that bad.
On arrival in Watford, there were a few people in the house and he carefully greeted people from a distance. There was no shaking hands, no hugging so he kept the social distance and indeed he was very safe — at least his mind assured him.
Culturally, it is not proper to refuse to eat when served with drinks or food at a funeral, so Tapuwa accepted a glass of sugar free orange drink.
He then felt the urge to cough just after drinking the juice. He observed drops of the juice squirting out of his mouth sprinkling the mourners and tried to say something but started to choke.
Tapuwa gasped for air before slumping to the floor and in the ensuing confusion people forgot the social distance and surrounded him with some administering the usual anti-choking procedures.
Tapuwa’s friend called 999 after he literally couldn’t get off the floor and was struggling to sit upright.
Once in hospital, doctors found that one of his lungs had collapsed and the other was struggling to cope. The doctors told friends and those who had accompanied him to go home and exercise self-quarantine.
Tapuwa was on his own, because family could not enter his room and was struggling to understand what medics were saying because they were wearing hazmat suits and speaking through masks.
The deepest breath he could take was a “really strong sniff” and “nothing would inflate”.
Those around him in the ICU were not 80 or 90-year-olds, he observed.
“They were young kids — there were people the same age as me and some much younger,” he said.
Tapuwa initially thought he had a cold or flu or just another problem rather than Covid-19.
The young medical doctor remembered noticing symptoms long before the drink. Throughout the journey from Wales he had felt the urge to cough. He quickly dismissed it as a result of the air con. But after the sip it turned to a “bad dry cough” and a “bit of headache”.
He realised it was more serious after his heart rate and oxygen saturation were measured and found to be 80 percent instead of 96 percent at least.
By the time he was admitted to hospital he had a “real hacking cough to the point where you wanted to be sick”.
Within a short time Tapuwa lost all senses of taste or smell.
He developed a really bad temperature, which was definitely the worst ever felt.
After his friends and his wife were sent away from the hospital, he was taken to an isolation room and “two guys came in dressed in hazmat suits with a ventilator pack on the back, took swabs straight away and just became increasingly concerned”.
“It was like something out of a movie. You have got no family with you, you don’t know what’s going on, no one can explain to you, and you cannot hear people properly because they are talking through masks.
“It is a very, very terrifying time. No one can wish even his enemy to go through this predicament.
Once in intensive care he was “hooked up to every machine” and could hear “every alarm and bell going off”.
His lung had collapsed and was failing, his other lung was getting overwhelmed. And with everything that was going on, he was put on a ventilator.
But a ventilator is for support rather than treatment. It will sustain your suffering. That is the most terrifying part. There’s no real treatment for Covid-19, there’s no medication. You are in hospital just to manage your misery.
“You’re expecting them to give you a drug to make everything better.”
In the end,Tapuwa was not put on a ventilator, but had oxygen forced into him via a nasal cannula while doctors checked his stats “from a distance”.
There was a man opposite him whose family could not come to see him just like everybody in the ward.
The guy needed his family but the virus had put its rules.
No one could oppose it. Sadly, the guy lasted probably two to three hours and didn’t make it. There were over 10 people who came in with the hope to survive and were wheeled out straight to the morgue.
Tapuwa was terrified that death was real and just seconds away. But the pain you go through only to die afterwards is not worth it.
When he started to get better he could “feel everything switching back on”.
The nurses were “absolutely fantastic” and taught him “how to breathe again. He was like a new born baby.
“You would always want to go home meet your family and thank God for your second chance,” he said. But not this time. Tapuwa was told to self-quarantine after discharge. His family was diagnosed positive. So was half of the people who were with him at the funeral.
A very heavy sense of guilty overwhelmed Tapuwa as he imagined how many people he had put at risk because he just wanted to be culturally correct.
He looked up with tears writing two straight lines on his cheeks.
His message: “Coronavirus is real. You stay home for your safety. Remember you are not stuck at home but you are safe at home. You need a change of attitude. The whole community can be wiped out because you are stubborn. Culture changes and changes but your life is more important than culture. Remember there are people who depend on
Tapuwa survived the Covid-19 but there is no guarantee that you will. – Herald
