Sick Boy: Part 1

As this story is quite a long one, I have decided to break it up into three easy-to-digest parts. Here's part 1!

I couldn't write about this before now. I have wanted to, many times. I started a few times too, but I ended up deleting it. You see, how do you take the monumental complexities of a life-altering happening and fit it into actual words, never mind a somewhat coherent story? Okay, that sounded a little melodramatic (even for me), but it's true. My life has not been the same for any single day since July 2021.

To depart from, perhaps, a more logical starting point, some background: Somewhere during June 2021, I contracted Covid-19, the Delta-variant. I was not vaccinated, because the vaccination was not available for my age group yet. I had no particular concerns with the vaccine, so I was merely waiting for my turn. I still have no idea where or how I became infected, but alas. I started feeling flu-ish towards the end of June. At first, I wasn't too concerned and I dismissed it as a cold of some sort. A couple of days later, I could feel a clear escalation of my symptoms. I made an appointment to see my doctor, and I got tested. After a gruelling 24 hours, the results were in: it's negative. The doctor starts me on antibiotics, and I head home.

After 48 hours, I was sicker. Much sicker. I made another doctor's appointment. I remember having to wait outside the medical centre, as only a few patients were allowed. The process was slow, and we waited a while. For some reason, I have a uniquely vivid memory of this moment. I remember distinctly being the most tired I have been in my entire life. I was also exhausted listening to one woman in the queue go on and on about some issue with her landlord. At times, I used what little energy I had left, just to roll my eyes. Anyway, when at last it was my turn, I was tested again - this time with a rapid test. After a couple of minutes, the results come back negative. I remember the doctor being quite surprised. She said that my lungs sound exactly like Covid-lungs. She adjusts my antibiotics, and I go home again.

Two days later, I woke up at around 04h30 - it felt like I couldn't breathe. I shove my head out of the window into the freezing winter air, in a desperate attempt to somehow get more oxygen. My partner hears this. He runs down the stairs and helps to calm me down. He got me an appointment to see the doctor at 9 am. At the doctor's office, I am helped by a young doctor whose own phobia of Covid-19, did not help my cause. She listens to my story and sends me home with new antibiotics. Later that afternoon, my blood oxygen levels were dipping to the mid-80s. Due to, I assume, the lack of sufficient oxygen, my memory is very blurry at this point, but the next thing I know, my partner has sourced an oxygen tank, and my employer has paid for it (it was incredibly expensive to get oxygen tanks back then).

My next memory is of the 7th of July. I woke up feeling much better. I had spent the night on oxygen, and my partner sat up with me the entire night to monitor my blood oxygen levels while I slept (I did not know he did that, but he's an unbelievable person). I remember sending a selfie on a group chat with friends and family (created to keep everyone in the loop about my condition at that time). I felt so much better. About an hour later, I vividly remember, just looking up at my partner and saying "I need to go to the hospital." He went into the bedroom and came back with a packed suitcase. He said he knew, and he had already packed a bag for me.

We rushed to a hospital we had heard still had beds available. My memory becomes a little blurry here, but I remember sitting in the car for what felt like an eternity. We had brought the oxygen tank with us, to ensure I still had oxygen in the car - which helped, but I could feel that - even with the extra oxygen, I was fading fast. My last memory, until a couple of hours later, was looking up and seeing a woman on a chair (at the door of the emergency room), pointing at me.

My memory returns to me being taken from casualties to my own room. It was a huge room, one of those with space for about six or eight beds, but it was empty. The bed I was brought in on, was the only bed in the room. I learned later that, since I had not tested positive for Covid yet, I couldn't be admitted to a Covid ward. With a lot of medication going into my IV, I dazed in and out of consciousness. Later that afternoon, I remember watching Federer play against Hurkacz in the Wimbledon quarterfinals (I'm not saying it's Federer's fault, but that result did not help my health ... or my will to live). I remember meeting a doctor that evening (for the first time since I was admitted in the early afternoon). When I looked up at him, I remember seeing an exhausted man - the type of exhaustion you could see came from working non-stop for probably months on end. He informed me that a bed had just opened up in the ICU and that given my infection markers, it would be wise to move me to the ICU immediately.

As they rolled my bed out of the ward, I remember having two questions: 1) Why did a bed open up? 2) How long will it be before my bed opens up? I don't think I really wanted the answer to either one of those questions.