Andrew Watts spent 300 days in the hospital after a corona infection, the doctors had almost given up on him. Even months after his release, he is still struggling with the consequences of the disease.
There was a celebration on October 21 last year in the Covid-19 ward of London’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The nursing staff formed a line and applauded to say goodbye to a very special patient. The reason: Andrew Watts was finally allowed to leave the hospital after ten months. The 40-year-old was admitted shortly after Christmas 2020 after a corona infection, had spent eight months in the intensive care unit and was considered by the doctors in the hospital to be “one of the sickest Covid patients” they had seen during the pandemic had.
But even today, three months after being released from the hospital, Andrew Watts’ suffering is not yet over. He is still struggling with the consequences of the disease and has to relearn skills that he once took for granted. “I can walk for about 15 minutes before my legs start to burn,” he told London portal MyLondon.
Covid-19 patient has to learn to walk and speak
He also still finds it difficult to speak after being artificially ventilated through a tube for months. His throat was severely affected by a tracheotomy in the hospital: “That’s why you hear a whistle when I speak, because there’s basically a hole in my throat that air comes out of.” Watts has only recently been able to breathe on his own again. For more than two months after being discharged from the hospital, he still needed a nasal cannula every night to strengthen his lungs.
Andrew Watts is still a long way from a normal life. Despite all the complications, however, he emphasizes that he is “doing well”. And he’s making progress: the father of two children can now go to his son’s school and back again – one of his major goals in recent months. “When you’re fit and healthy, you just do those things and you don’t think about it. But when all of that was taken away from me, I understood that I can’t take it for granted,” he told My London.
Five weeks in an induced coma
Watts spent a total of 300 days in the hospital and struggled with death for a long time. He was in an artificial coma for five weeks, suffered a collapsed lung twice, and in February the doctors were even about to turn off the ventilator because they considered the chances of recovery to be too low. Visitors were not allowed at the time, Watts could only communicate with his sister and his wife via telephone. He didn’t tell his parents about his illness for a long time, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
It wasn’t until June 2021 that Watts was able to breathe again without a ventilator. After that, his condition slowly but steadily improved. However, he could not speak, he communicated with his family by pointing at letters on a blackboard with a stick. The doctors assume that Watts was hit so hard by the infection because he had just received chemotherapy for lymph gland cancer and his immune system was weakened as a result.
Andrew Watts calls for vaccination
At that time, the London taxi driver could not protect himself against Covid-19 with a vaccination. Today he wishes that as many people as possible would be vaccinated in order to prevent such a severe course as in his case. However, he also had his experiences with opponents of vaccination – even people who knew his story would have told him to his face that they did not believe in the effect of the corona vaccination.
Sources: /
Source From: Stern
