This is a report by a local man who has just recovered from COVID-19

https://nextdoor.co.uk/post/17592193820812?init_source=copy_link_share


Feeling much better now. Spent nearly 4 days in St Peter’s Hospital, Chertsey, after 10 days of self-isolation at home, with constant fever, nausea, which resulted in me not being able to eat a thing for around 5 days, sore throat, cough and breathlessness. Even a glass of water made me retch. My perception of taste and smell became strangely distorted. I’ve lost 1 stone 4 pounds in weight. I saw terrible suffering. A youngish guy in the bed next to me, when I was in an open ward, was in great discomfort and was struggling to breathe with a high fever. I was lucky compared to those whose immune systems get out of control and also develop pneumonia. I was put on a drip for fluids, an anti-emetic for the nausea and two powerful antibiotics for a secondary lung infection that untreated could easily have progressed to pneumonia. I was put on oxygen as my levels were low due to shortness of breath. I was checked with an ECG machine in an ambulance and on the ward, had a chest x-ray and manually checked for breathing etc by three doctors, as well as several rounds of blood tests to look for markers and organ function. It is a strange illness. There is some overlap with flu, but a lot of the time due to the nausea that was constant, it felt like my body was trying to reject a poison. The majority of the hospital seemed to be dealing with the virus. Blue polythene air locks had been put up at the entrances to all wards with hazard tape. I knew that I was in the eye of the storm, and it felt surreal, like a scene from a post-apocalyptic, biological warfare film. My mind with fever was struggling to process the enormity of the situation as I got moved between various wards on a bed. Most of all, I really feel for the nurses, support staff and doctors who have to knowingly enter into a life-threatening, toxic environment every day and work so incredibly hard. Tragically, some have paid the ultimate price, and left loved ones and dependents behind. I heard staff outside the side room, that I was fortunate to be put into after being on a large ward until I tested positive for COVID-19, talking anxiously about the lack of personal protective equipment. I cannot bear the hypocritical bleatings coming out of the Tory party after their years of ideologically driven austerity that has hurt the poor, the disabled and the disadvantaged most, whilst protecting the super-wealthy from contributing far more in taxes. As for the queen and royal family who were revealed to be taking advantage of overseas tax loopholes by keeping parts of their vast wealth in off-shore tax havens when the media broke the Panama Paper’s scandal. What collective short term memories we have for their breathtaking hypocrisy. And she has the audacity to deliver a speech from her gilded palace. Then there’s the ‘bullshit of Bono’ as he and the celebrity class were also revealed to be taking advantage of overseas tax-havens. The Tories have been stealthily privatising huge chunks of the NHS, selling it off to Tory business types such as Branson’s Virgin Health, BUPA etc, whilst paying nurses and hospital staff a pittance for their professionalism and commitment. They are supported by the tax dodging, benighted, Murdoch, Barclay brothers media empire that includes The Mail, Times, Telegraph, Express, Sun, Star and Sky. How misinformed and brainwashed we are by them as they maintain the status quo, the Tory power structure, and the royal hierarchy. It’s all based on personal greed and self-interest. The Conservatives have left the NHS woefully short of nurses, hospital beds and equipment. I hope this is a game-changer, and that people do not have the ignorance to lap up the right-wing media and vote for the Tories ever again. It is time to redistribute the vast wealth that the UK sits on and close down the overseas tax loopholes that serve the wealthy and royals for good. I feel so very fortunate not to have fully succumbed to this virus and grateful for the intervention of my sister Anne who pushed me to call 999 when I thought I’d be able to continue fighting it at home. I am so very grateful to the ambulance crew who checked me out and whizzed me up to hospital in the early hours, and the kindness and care of all the nurses, support staff and doctors at St Peter’s who are working in deplorable conditions. Happy to be recuperating at home with my son James. Big thanks and hugs to the dedicated staff at St Peter’s, family and friends ❤️ !

The responses he received from our neighbours were furious - people telling him not to post political opinions and berate the royal family. Funny, hopeless and sad. The people around here are dyed in the wool Boris-lovers who read the Daily Mail and believe every word. Education was wasted on them.