I had COVID-19 and here is how it went - Part 1

I made it ten months frontline before I caught coronavirus. I had also just had the first dose of my vaccine. I want to complain about how annoying that is but I am trying really hard to be grateful. I am trying my absolute hardest not to whine (shoutout to my instagram followers who have already listened to me whine). 

Here are the events leading up to, during and after my coronavirus experience.

C - 7 days

It is my second and final shift of two days at work before a long weekend off. I'm working with a lovely paramedic who I have worked with a few times recently, she has just come back from work after having coronavirus over Christmas. She says she was not too unwell, just a little bit grotty and she enjoyed having Christmas off and an excuse not to do too much. She said she was really lucky that she was not too unwell.

Our first job (out of area) but the village I used to live in. A fall with a head injury, the patient was on anticoagulants also was consistently complaining of central back pain, so we immobilised and took him in. We barely even queued at hospital (a rarity nowadays), handed the patient over and greened up. Our next job was a confirmed covid patient with difficulty in breathing (hardly a surprise) just down the road.

The job was as given, the lady was diagnosed with covid eight days before and her breathing had been getting progressively worse. Her main concern was that she had psoriasis (an autoimmune disease) and that her body often compensates for a really long time before showing she is unwell. Her GP wanted her to have a scan. Rather than booking the patient in for transport, he asked her to call 999 without documenting any of this on the system. When we arrived, our checks showed there was nothing to be concerned about and we wanted to speak to the GP regarding this scan, as we were not quite following what kind of scan he wanted her to have and why he did not just book it in for her himself. The patient had a NEWS2 of 2, which reduced to 0 when we calmed her and her breathing slowed. Whilst we were waiting to get hold of the GP the patient asked us to check over her Dad. Initially he refused and we did not push the matter because he looked fine. The daughter was insistent that we check her father over, so we did. Turns out that the patient, who was also diagnosed with covid five days prior, was pyrexic, tachycardic, tachypnoeic and hypertensive and also had borderline oxygen saturations. Great.

The patient really did not look unwell, but NEWSing a 7 is not ideal and we could not discharge him on scene like this. The father had come over to look after his two grandchildren whilst his daughter went into hospital. With both adults needing transport to hospital, the Dad requiring it more urgently than the daughter, we booked an urgent journey for the daughter whilst she came up with how she was going to sort the childcare problem. We did end up speaking to the receptionist for the first patient to establish what scan was required, although nothing was noted on the system so we kept the urgent journey booked and took the father in. I received a call on my phone asking me to book in my coronavirus vaccine, but I had to ask them to call me back as I was with a patient.

We queued for 1 hour with this patient. There was no room in red ED anywhere. We were the second vehicle to start queuing. We tried to keep the doors open to keep it ventilated but it was the middle of winter and extremely cold, and it became very hard to keep an adequate balance. I lost count of the number of times I asked my patient to lift his mask over his mouth and nose. 1.5 hours in and a nurse came on the back and took bloods from the patient. 2 hours in and we were asked to take our patient to x-ray. We got to watch the scan and the radiographer indicated that there was not much wrong with his chest. We hunted down a kettle and a sandwich for our patient, who we had been in contact with for about 5 hours so far, and we presumed he must be getting a bit hungry. I received a call-back about my vaccination and booked it in for Saturday lunchtime, in two days time. It was such an exciting feeling, thinking that I had managed for so long not to catch it, and that in not long I would be even better protected. 3 hours in and a doctor came on and took arterial blood to check the patient's blood gases. The doctor explained to our patient that the results of the blood tests and scan would determine whether the patient was required to be admitted or be sent home. 4 hours in and we were asked to bring the patient inside where the doctor said that his gases and chest x-ray were fine and that he was free to go after a shot of dexamethasone. He was given a prescription for 6 further days of the steriod and was told to pick it up tomorrow.

The patient was told to leave but he had no way of being transported home, so he was told that he would have to spend the night in the discharge lounge and to await transport tomorrow morning (it was approximately 7pm at this time). We asked our hospital ambulance liaison officer (HALO) if we could take the patient home, who spoke to ambulance control and decided that was fine. The patient's daughter had arrived in an ambulance 2 hours prior, leaving her nephew (who has no childcare experience) looking after the children. We were eager to get our patient back to his daughter's house to ensure the children were definitely in safe hands. Before leaving, I counted the number of stacking ambulances. There were 15 ambulances queuing for a space in red ED. Whilst we had been queuing those 5 ish hours, five cardiac arrest general broadcasts went out as well as numerous category 1 calls.

We took the patient back to his daughter's house. At this point, we were just over an hour from the end of our 12 hour shift, we had not had meal break yet and we were absolutely fed up. Control allowed us to be returned back to station, and by the time we were there it was too late to be put on meal break, so after thoroughly decontaminating the vehicle, we were stood down to go home 30 minutes early.

C - 5 days

It is vaccination day!!!! I am really excited. I have never been this excited to have a vaccination in my life! I went to our local (ish) primary care centre where I lined up with a couple of my other colleagues to have my jab. It was all really quick and clearly was well planned. The jab was the least painful jab I have ever had, I barely noticed it. I then sat in a very socially distanced waiting room for 15 mins to check for any abnormal side effects, and was free to leave.

About four hours after the jab, my arm started to ache a little bit. It was not too bad, but I was very much aware of it. During the night, I could not lay on that side and my arm felt like it was falling off!

C - 4 days

I did not feel too bad, although I had a very achy arm and a very small headache. I did my best to ignore it, took some paracetamol and carried on with my day. We did generic Sunday stuff, went for a walk, played card games, tidied up and prepared for the next week. I did my bi-weekly lateral flow (covid home testing kit) which came back negative.

Thanks for reading, sorry it is not the most interesting but I thought it might be useful to give you guys some background before I continually grump about having symptoms! Anyway stay safe (I hope I do too) and see you in the next post!

More in the 'I had COVID-19 and here is how it went' Series

Part 1