Facing death by Coronavirus made me look at my faith, family and my future
Graham Ledger, a lay chaplain, tells of the real horrors of being a victim of Covid and how it helped him reassess his life …
I nearly died!
Those three words still bring home to me all I hold dear: my faith as a Christian, my family and where I go from here.
I had not realised what had happened to me because the Coronavirus pneumonia took hold of me by stealth.
The positive result came from a test at work on Monday January 6.
Every Monday my frontline work in the forensic step-down support role I occupy offers a test.
Having worked frontline since March last year, I confess, I had become a little complacent. Not so much in lax behaviour but by never taking very seriously the thought that I might succumb to COVID-19. But I did.
And I will never forget that day as I started self-isolation at home.
Then I got a call from my GP who had decided to place me on a virtual ward.
This involved providing me with a pulse oximeter that took my oxygen saturation and pulse readings.
I then fed them into a database monitored by medical experts.
I say life-saving because the virus inhibits your awareness of debilitation … I had not eaten for three days and was not worried as I had no appetite.
Luckily, the observations registered with the virtual ward team and caused concern.
And on Thursday 9t January I was taken by ambulance to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital where I was swiftly assessed and put on what became known to me as COVID-19 Central – the ward just before ITU intensive care unit.
I was still blissfully unaware of how very seriously ill I had become in such a short space of time.
It was only after the danger was over and recovery well underway that I read the detailed medical report stating starkly at the beginning: “We are treating this gentleman for serious Coronavirus pneumonia.”
Whilst I was unaware of my own deterioration, I became acutely aware of the affects of this virus on my fellow patients.
It soon became very obvious who was not going to make it. As a past member of NHS Chaplaincy teams for six-and-a-half years I was fully trained in walking alongside finite hospital journeys and I had ministered to many people during my time with the Trust.
However, the professional separation is enabled when you are reaching out and providing unconditional care as required.
The difference when you are witnessing dying patients and the suffering of relatives coming in to say goodbye is profound, particularly when you are too ill to reach out to them.
***
Energy depletes swiftly and so much so, that you simply cannot countenance a shower. You become very grateful for wipes and other ways to keep as clean as possible.
The increasing ability to get to the toilet with mandatory oxygen in tow enabled strip washes as a specific example. I swiftly became self-sufficient in the ability to disconnect from bed oxygen and connect myself to the mobile cylinder.
The staff was consistently attentive to patient needs and nothing was too much trouble and their compassion and professional expertise provided indispensable physical and emotional support.
These dedicated people were working in the area of highest risk of contracting the virus and wore full PPE at all times – throughout 12-hour shifts and they never failed to deliver exemplary care.
***
One odd aspect of the slow recovery process is that my body craved things, a specific example was that I would awake at 3am and need two slices of buttered toast and porridge. This may sound ridiculous but I would be in major discomfort until I had consumed these foods. Not once did staff question this need and provided what was needed every morning.
***
My swift recovery came down to swift infusions of the strongest antibiotics, known by staff as ‘Domestos’, plus steroids.
The life-saver, it would seem, was my willingness to be a guinea pig for an experimental drug infusion which I could feel doing its job as it was administered: “It felt like the sun going through me” was the way I described it.
My cough had been productive throughout and the ability to expel the blood-stained mucus from my chest undoubtedly aided recovery.
Oxygen saturations became higher and my need for oxygen lessened as a result. Suffice to say by Day 10 I was off big masks and using a nose supply. By the 12th day I was off oxygen and being monitored ready for discharge on January 22nd.
***
On the day of discharge I had a shower, a wonderful treat after such a long time on wipes and strip washes, and sat in the Day Room awaiting a final visit from the consultant.
In the blur of illness, and it does affect your conscious awareness, my fourteen days on the ward did not feel like that length of time at all. The final awareness of how ill I was when I was admitted on January 9th, came to me when the consultant insisted I take six weeks to be in convalescence; that was salutary enough, but the phrase that completed the awareness was, “Graham, had this been last March, I would have lined up the staff to applaud you off the ward.”
Being a determined and active man all my life, convalescence did not sit well with past life goals, but I was a man who had changed in so many ways over the previous fourteen days: I will come to my spiritual awakening later, but I knew that to fully recover and be able to return to my vocation, I had to obey medical instructions.
My life had changed irrevocably.
The ambulance team arrived to take me home as I was too weak to drive or take public transport. To carry my bags was impossible. The ambulance team ensured I was in my door with bags close by and it was time to relax. I had enough provisions for a couple of days but my cozy nestling down was suddenly interrupted by an increased pulse rate and on Saturday 25 January the ambulance came and took me in again fearing a pulmonary embolism had taken hold.
Many tests later, and an overnight stay in a very nice en-suite side room – this room necessary due to airborne particles emanating from me – revealed no clots and a clear chest.
It was time to go home again.
***
The six-week convalescence started in earnest and I was very weak and very glad to be able to relax and not rush recovery. In fact, I knew that I could not rush at all so obedience came easily.
There were practicalities of liaising with my employer locally and with the HR department. I am in the second three months of my probation and this would normally mean only one week of sick pay.
This is the best employer for whom I have worked and due to coronavirus causing my absence they extended my salary by 28 days.
My local manager worked out a way to facilitate my convalescence that enabled no loss of salary at all through using my holiday accrued and an early return-to-work date to enable the holiday pay to be given.
It was a great outcome with exemplary management support and least effort expended by me. The psychological benefit of a good manager in empathy with my situation is uplifting.
What is the psychological toll? This is inseparable from my spiritual life, a life graced by an unshakeable faith in Jesus Christ, enhanced by being part of the Benedictine Order as an Oblate of a local monastic community, and experience of miracles in my life and the ongoing development of contemplative prayer.
Throughout the whole of my illness, time in hospital and in recovery at home, I have not experienced fear at all. This is not my human strength but the grace of a faith so profound in God that I trust in the promise my best interests are held in the love of the Holy Trinity and the mercy poured out on me is constant.
The comfort of accepting God has his hand on me enables me to allow the Creator to deal with the insecurities of the creature. My complete surrender to His will allowed peace to reign in the knowledge that death or life was possible. The profound acceptance of death to this life being a wonderful gift in the wider knowledge I am saved and promised glory with God, brought peace at the most profound level and a swift realisation that I am to be living here a while longer to serve the will of God in the here and now.
The peace to which I refer does not mean freedom from psychological trauma; my feeling of helplessness took a toll. My professional work involves reflective practice where time is taken to reflect on a situation in work and identify areas where things went well and an assessment of what went less well and needs improvement. It was the inability to reach out to dying people and to their relatives whilst I was so ill that was profoundly traumatic and brought on sudden outbursts of emotion.
My spiritual awareness helped me accept the trauma for what it is: arrogance that only I could provide the comfort needed by those suffering. My life has been spent driven to be compassionate and unconditionally loving to the extent my work in these ministry areas became my direction and could lose sight of what God was calling me to do. A complete inability to do anything in my illness was traumatic but, upon praying it through, was just what I needed. I am so glad to have been through the time of illness as it has brought the wisdom I need to live my life closer to God’s will until he calls me home. This is a gift of grace and mercy that totally liberates me.
I still needed to deal with my emotional upheaval and I take advantage of a therapy unit offered by my employer. It is completely separate to the Trust and no one knows if you call or not. My first counseling session really helped and I will call on an ad hoc basis as a need arises to talk through my anguish. Each day I discern new strength balanced with the need to completely rest as my body dictates; the healing is slow but sure but I must pay attention when the call to cease everything and rest appears. For example, I know I must stop writing now; so I will join you again in the next paragraph after I am rested.
Anger: I need to resolve the anger in me towards those who choose to deny the realities of COVID-19 and its devastating effects. Conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers not only accept the brainwashing created by the algorithms in their social media preferences, but their treatment of dedicated healthcare workers is simply evil. Note that I acknowledge my anger needs resolution.
However, I may feel it, but it is what I do with that feeling that counts. Forgiveness is mandatory for a Christian and I do forgive. Thankfully, I have come to know that forgiveness is an act of the will, not emotion. I stand firmly against what I discern as the lunacy of the cult that attacks those who professionally love patients better through their dedication and compassion.
What right do I have to make such a stand?
It comes down to experience, my first-hand knowledge of COVID-19 and how it kills, devastates families and poses the biggest threat to the world since my childhood polio vaccine eradicated that plague. Anyone has the right to an opinion, this is the democratic right of free speech; I encourage testing of any choice to support a view. The best test for me is facing the fact that in my COVID-19 sojourn I nearly died.
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