Indira Lupuku, a mother of two, who had contracted the novel coronavirus in September last year, has related that since she recovered from the disease, her life has never been the same.
In a pre-recorded interview released by the Ministry of Health, the woman [whose age was not disclosed], explained that when a close relative had contracted the virus and was at the point of death, she realised the grave threat exposed to her family.
“We were all tested and we were all tested positive,” she recalled. During the first two weeks of home isolation, her family was contacted daily by health officials.
Even after the two weeks passed, Lupuku said she was still experiencing symptoms and was advised to get retested.
“I went and I got re-tested and I was still positive. I was saying that ‘this is just another two weeks I’m going to be fine, I’m going to go through it’.”
“And one day I was lying down, it was about 6 o’ clock in the evening and I jumped up out of my sleep because I couldn’t breathe properly. The shortness of breath continued but it would only happen when I was lying down,” Lupuku explained.
After she started to experience these symptoms, she went back to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation’s Covid-19 section where doctors decided to send her to the Infectious Disease Hospital (Ocean View Facility) in Liliendaal.
“I had to tell my children that I’m not going to be there for a little while. As I was in there, being in hospital, it’s taxing mentally, it’s very easy to fall in to depression. Psychologically, you can’t do it on your own. By all means, you need all the support that you can get from family and friends and I was able to get people like my pastor and so, calling and checking on me and it helped. But I still wasn’t able to see my children,” Lupuku related.
She stated that her husband then came up with the idea of bringing their children to seawall behind the facility where her room was located, so that she could see them through her window.
“I could tell you that was very heartbreaking but of course when you’re talking to them, you can’t let them know how you feel because you don’t want them to know this is as scary as you feel and you don’t want that to translate to them. That helped me though seeing them every morning that helped me,” Lupuku said.
When the time came for her to return home, the mother said it felt like a major victory.
“Leaving the hospital was a big victory for me but as I went home, I spent three months sitting up breathing because I couldn’t breathe properly when I lie down. After Covid, your life is never the same, my body wasn’t the same. I had symptoms of long COVID,” Lupuku noted.
However, doctors recommended that she start physiotherapy, which helped to get her breathing back to normal.
“We’re getting a little bit lackadaisical in our approach to Covid where we don’t want to where mask, we’re tired of sanitising, but it’s necessary. But more importantly, its necessary for us to vaccinate. I can tell you even though I had Covid, I want afraid to take the vaccine but I knew that this was the only I could protect not only me but my family,” the woman posited.
Lupuku contended that while some persons believe that they are strong if enough to battle the virus without the vaccine, and while this may be true, they need to be considerate of others, especially vulnerable people they may come in contact with.
