I burst into tears. I wasn’t sure that we’d speak again
ADAM CLAYTON’S DAD WAS IN A FIGHT FOR HIS LIFE WHEN THE VIRUS STRUCK. BUT AFTER 51 DAYS IN INTENSIVE CARE HE’S ON THE MEND
ADAM CLAYTON sat crying in his car fearing he had just spoken to his dad for the last time. It had been a week since the Middlesbrough midfielder’s father had been rushed into North Manchester General Hospital at 3am complaining he could not breathe.
And Clayton had just received the news that his dad, who had tested positive for coronavirus and gone on to contract pneumonia, was being moved to an intensive care unit for the second time in his life.
‘I spoke to him an hour before he went on to ICU,’ Clayton tells
Sportsmail from his home near Harrogate. ‘They were going to put him to sleep. I was saying, “Just beat it, Dad, we’re all waiting for you. You’re the strongest person mentally I’ve ever met”.
‘When I got off the phone, it’s the first time I’ve cried for a while. I was driving at the time and I burst into tears for five minutes. You don’t know if you’re ever going to talk to him again.
‘On the opposite side, I was like, “It can’t get my dad, he’s too strong”. But at the back of your mind, it’s like, “It could, it could”.’
Steve Clayton, 60, had actually refused to go to ICU earlier in his hospital stay, scarred by events of 22 years ago, when his heart stopped three times and doctors suggested turning off his lifesupport machine.
‘When I was nine, he had a perforated bowel and he ended up with sepsis, and then his lung collapsed all at the same time,’ Boro’s Clayton recalls. ‘They told him he was the most poorly person in Manchester. He was in an induced coma then for three weeks.
‘So that’s why his lungs were susceptible and why he refused to go to ICU this time. He said, “I’m not going, you don’t come off there twice”. But three days later it was, “No, you’ve got to go”.
‘That’s where the games really began for him. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong.’
For Adam, each phone call from the doctor or his Mum, Jacqueline, 59, brought dread. For the 51 days Steve was in intensive care, it was hell for the whole family.
‘If your phone rings, and it’s your Mum or it’s the hospital, you are scared, like, “Please don’t be the phone call to end all phone calls”,’ explains Clayton, whose wife Amanda works as a midwife. ‘Two weeks into ICU they rang and said he was on 80 per cent oxygen. Then he had kidney failure.
‘They had to put him on dialysis every day and his heart went twice. They had to shock him twice.
‘That’s when we started thinking how bad this could be and that this could be going the wrong way. Mum didn’t want to ring any more so I started ringing.
‘I said to the doctor, “Do I need to prepare my family for the worst case here? I’m the eldest, just tell me the bare bones of it”. He said, “It’s less than 50-50”.
‘I came off that phone call and in a weird way I was happy. In my head before that, it was 10 per cent. I thought my dad was going to die. So for him to say 50-50, I was like, “He’ll make that”.’
Thankfully, Clayton was correct and his dad defied the odds once again, coming out of ICU this week — 22 years after his near-death experience in the same hospital.
‘Day by day he managed to crawl his way back,’ says Clayton. ‘One day we got a call out of the blue to say, “Your dad is awake”. It was like, “Wow, that is crazy”.
‘Once he was awake and he knew what he needed to do to get out, it took him four days to get out instead of two weeks.’ The joyful moment Steve moved into a different ward was filmed by staff and shared on social media by Clayton. It shows his dad punching the air as NHS workers give him a guard of honour. ‘We just sat there all afternoon watching the video and showing my baby, saying, “That’s Grandad, he’s done it”,’ smiles Clayton. The 31-year-old’s first daughter Bea was born on December 23. Steve has only met his granddaughter three times before but, thanks to the NHS, he was able to speak to her via FaceTime on Wednesday night. ‘Without the NHS, I wouldn’t have a dad on this planet with me now,’ says Clayton. ‘They are amazing people. They are on the frontline of a war and are risking their lives every day, doing things like they have done for my dad and saving them.’ Clayton can now look forward to a day when his dad gets to sit in the stands and watch him play football again. He has his father to thank for his career as it was Steve who — while in intensive care the first time around — arranged for him to go on trial at Manchester City, assisted by ex-City striker Jon Macken, a relative. ‘My dad comes to every game he can get to,’ Clayton adds. ‘It will be amazing just to still ring him before a game and to know that he’s still there for that bit of advice and support. ‘I’m sure he can’t wait for the season to get up and running, and to come and watch me again one day.’