Man recovers after 38 days on ventilator

KOLKATA: Nitaidas Mukherjee, a resident of south Kolkata, may well be one among the over 17,800 persons cured of Covid-19 till date in the country, but his doctors term his recovery a miracle. The 52-year-old was kept on a ventilator for 38 days before he returned home on Friday, free of Covid.

Doctors at AMRI in Dhakuria where Mukherjee was admitted, said that it was a remarkable feat, as a Covid-19 patient on a ventilator is not considered to have a high chance of survival.

“This is my second life you can say. Without the doctors I would have been dead by now. They are the actual heroes,” Mukherjee, who is still frail and felt too weak to speak over phone, said.

He first began to show symptoms of lower respiratory tract infection mid-march. Having suffered a bout of pneumonia in 2017, his family, comprising his wife, Aparajita, his 75-year-old mother and septuagenarian aunt thought his bouts of cough were par for the course.

However, it’s when he developed fever that his family decided to have him tested.

One of the guidelines for testing issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) at the time was that a person could only be tested if they had travelled abroad.

“We didn’t have any travel history. But as the symptoms were similar to that of Covid-19, we decided to take him to a private hospital on March 29. He was put on ventilator the same night. The next day his test came positive and his battle with death started,” said Aparajita (39).

Ashisconditionworseneddoctors performed a procedure called tracheostomy, which involves making an incision in the throat to open a direct airway to trachea for ease of breathing.

Coronavirus disease is a type of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). Normally, ARDS is something that happens over time, but with Sars-cov-2, it’s faster: the lungs get inflamed, and fluid leaks into the alveoli.