Amputation & Covid: A double whammy nightmare

Nightmares, at the best of times, are nothing to look forward to. But when two of them hit a person simultaneously, the situation becomes far worse, particularly when one of them happens to be the news of a positive result to a Covid-19 test.

Such was the case for a 50-year-old man, suffering from diabetes, already in some despair because of an impending surgery to amputate his leg when he was informed that he tested positive for Covid-19.

“It was just an hour before the surgery. I was mentally preparing to lose my right leg when I was told that I had been infected by the Coronavirus,” the man, now having recovered from Covid-19, and currently under home quarantine, told Deccan Chronicle. The test for Covid-19 was a part of precautionary procedures that Osmania Hospital doctors had prescribed before proceeding with the amputation surgery.

“My operation was scheduled for around 9 am on April 23. The doctors told me at about 7 am that I had the virus. I was really terrified. My future looked bleak,” he said. His wife, his primary caregiver, was with him when the news was broken to him and what followed was fear.

“That is how it was. Both of us were scared but my wife was tested too after my results and her test came negative,” he recalled. It was only after he was shifted to Gandhi Hospital and was repeatedly reassured by doctors there that he began to feel a little better about the situation he was in. It also helped that he did not develop Covid-19 symptoms and that his wife tested negative for Covid-19.

“But I couldn’t sleep for two days,” he said.

He said he was clueless as to how he could have contracted the disease. “I said I had no idea when I was asked about people I had come into contact with,” he said.

It is possible that he contracted it during one of his daily visits to Osmania general hospital where he would present himself every day for treatment for diabetes and preparation for his upcoming surgery.

After his discharge from

Gandhi Hospital after testing negative for Coronavirus on May 8, he says he is now under the mandatory 14-day quarantine. “I now have to re-live the whole issue of losing my leg. This operation has been put off for two months after my testing positive for Covid-19,” he said. On his experience at Gandhi Hospital, he was all praise. “Since I am a diabetic, they took special care. They gave me the right kind of food and also medications for my bad leg,” he said.