The Night He Finally Came Home Again

I was in a wheelchair when they brought me dwelling house at the end of September 2020. I had been in intensive intendance for 102 days. For the offset ii months my wife, Plum, had not been allowed to visit, instead receiving daily reports on my status – recurrent delirium, two eye attacks, stents, kidney dialysis, pneumonia, memory loss and tracheotomy – all brought on by Covid.

Iii times she was told I wouldn't be resuscitated if I suffered any further deterioration and she had come to dread the ringing of the telephone. But merely when I got abode did I fully realise how much she and the families of other Covid patients had suffered.

In that location is something selfish about being critically sick, although you don't realise it at the time, when all your thoughts are of yourself. Doctors and nurses practice everything they can to relieve the pain, simply they never let you lot know that the smile they are wearing at your bedside may be masking their own burnout and fears.

For the first calendar month at abode I hobbled virtually with a walking frame, merely soon a physiotherapist encouraged me to walk with a stick, eventually going with me to purchase my newspapers. One mean solar day she didn't come, so I decided to get alone. Off I went on the 50 paces downwards the road and was just passing the bar on the corner, when …

Bang! My face striking the pavement. The manager of the bar had seen me fall. Rushing out, he helped me into a chair, then called an ambulance. My face was a mess of blood. The no-clotting pills, which were now role of my 11-pills-a-twenty-four hours routine, were doing their chore very well.

There was no waiting in the A&E department, my Covid history at the aforementioned hospital pushing me to the head of the queue. But information technology took hours for the bleeding to cease, during which time I was given X-rays and a encephalon scan before it was decided that the just real damage was to my self-esteem.

For the next four months I never went out alone, and every night I would watch the Covid reports on television. At that place was a very good one about Michael Rosen, the children'south author, who had been in intensive care with Covid at the same time that I was, although in some other infirmary.

Ray Connolly (left, in 1973) with David Essex, the pop singer and role player who starred in That'll Be the Solar day, for which Connolly wrote the screenplay. Photograph: Evening Standard/Getty Images

Shared adversity seemed to make us allies, so I wrote him a tweet saying that if things had worked out but a flake differently he and I might have met at the pearly gates.

To which he replied: "Yes, Ray, that would have been nice. You could have told me near John, Paul, George and Ringo." (I interviewed the Beatles on many occasions when I was a young announcer.)

Past this time in my recovery, I was joking on the phone to friends almost my "brush with the reaper" – until my children stopped me. "It isn't funny, Dad. You lot weren't at that place."

Indeed, I hadn't been there. I'd been hallucinating my days and nights away.

By January I could walk a mile, and so we went to go my start vaccination. I had to stop and sit down on a park bench on the way, but it was a start. Fatigue nevertheless swamped me every evening, simply the walking frame, crutches and sticks eventually went and I continued to get stronger.

And so, just a year later I had been hanging on to life through a ventilator, I was invited back to the infirmary where my life had been on the edge. This time, however, it wasn't for more than tests. I was there to cut a ribbon, make a spoken language and declare open up the new intensive care unit.

To stand with Plum and the medical staff who had saved me inverse my mental attitude to everything. Such a moment wouldn't accept been imaginable a twelvemonth earlier.

I'1000 now 85% back to where I was pre-Covid. I still get tired at night, can no longer swallow crimson meat or drink more than a glass of watered-down red wine, and I tin can't run to the postbox, or anywhere whatever more. But I'thou driving once more and in every other manner I'm fine.

Ray Connolly at dwelling.
Photograph: Alison Mcdougall/Evening Standard/Shutterstock

Until I was ill, all I liked to do was to work; writing was my hobby equally much every bit my job. There was always another projection.

Now I realise that I've travelled in the United states and France far more than in the U.k.. There'due south so much here to do, so much architecture and country to be admired, so much gardening to enjoy, so many books to read and so many family unit and friends to come across.

I've been given a 2d take chances. I'one thousand not going to waste it.

Ray Connolly's radio play, Devoted, about his six months in hospital with Covid, tin be heard on BBC Sounds.

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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/nov/17/a-moment-that-changed-me-after-102-days-in-intensive-care-i-finally-came-home

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