Survivors still fear COVID
One message - get vaccinated
Magret Rea was lying in a West Gippsland Hospital bed, isolated from family, thinking she would die from COVID-19.
She was struggling to breathe as the virus took hold, wearing down her determination she could fight what was unfolding around the world as a global pandemic.
Two weeks earlier, she and husband Terry Hennessy were travelling in Turkey.
But like most things in March 2020, COVID cut their trip short. Only for Magret, she also thought it had cut her life short.
When Terry and Magret returned to Warragul on March 17 last year the COVID landscape was only just taking shape.
On that day in Victoria, 23 new cases were recorded, taking the state’s total to 94. In the following days, they were to become Baw Baw Shire’s first COVID positives.
Nineteen months later, they continue to live with side effects. But for Magret, she admits, her biggest side effect is the fear of contracting COVID a second time.
“I am terrified about getting it again. I am paranoid… I send Terry out shopping when I can to avoid it.
“My antibodies are probably that strong that I won’t get it but I’m not willing to risk it because I’m worried I will die next time,” she said.
For the initial days, Magret and Terry remember the nagging cough, the shortness of breath and the fatigue.
But Magret’s condition deteriorated quickly and she was admitted to West Gippsland Hospital for nine days.
She was in isolation, on oxygen and scared.
“I thought I was going to die, that’s how frightened I was. Imagine what it would be like dying with no-one there with you.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen to you.
“It is just overwhelming – imagine a flu that is overwhelming your body,” Magret said.
They shake their heads at suggestions COVID is “like the flu.”
“The symptoms are similar to the flu but you have this underlying terror knowing it’s an epidemic that’s killing people worldwide. It was new and it was the unknown,“Terry said.
Terry and Magret were on an Antarctic cruise when they first became aware of COVID, hearing stories from the cruise ship’s photographer whose parents lived in Wuhan, China.
They were home for two weeks before leaving Melbourne on March 10 bound for Dubai and Turkey.
Six days later, asleep in their hotel in Kusadasi, they were woken by the tour company at 4am informing them the Australian government had ordered all Australians to return home.
Terry and Magret took all precautions – her daughter delivered their car to the airport and they returned home to isolate.
They were already feeling some symptoms, overwhelming fatigue, aches and pains and temperature spikes.
The test results confirmed what they deep down already knew.
It was the beginning of months of illness and now, like so many COVID survivors report, they live with “long COVID” – the symptoms that continue long after the infection.
For Terry, shortness of breath and loss of taste remain an ongoing battle. Magret still has the feeling that “someone is sitting on my chest,” while also dealing with high blood pressure and taste and smell sensitivity.
But 19 months on Terry said they also have to tell themselves to get on with life.
“It’s a bit like getting older and you accept you can’t do the things you used to do. I can’t walk up the hill now like I used to, so I have to accept that.
“I am amused at the people who say it’s my body and it will tell me there’s something wrong. That’s fine but by the time your body has told you, you would have spread it to people who may not be able to afford to get COVID,” he said.
As COVID survivors their message to others is simple – “get vaccinated.”
“You are doing it for yourself, your family, to protect the people you love and therefore helping the community. We need to get back to living life,” he said.
In their late 60s, they say they still have travelling to do, so much of the world to see.
That trip to Turkey “will not be my last overseas trip” Magret says boldly – her determination to travel again giving her hope that she can live as a COVID survivor in a COVID normal world where she relies on others to do the right thing and get vaccinated.