‘He is a miracle’: Father finally home after 32 days on ventilator battling coronavirus
DÓNAL LAWLOR has finally returned home after a battle with Covid-19 that saw him spend 32 days on a ventilator.
Neighbours and friends came out in force to clap Mr Lawlor (65) as he made his way to his house in Irishtown, Mullingar, last Friday after his amazing recovery.
His wife Aileen said he went into nearby Mullingar General Hospital on March 19, coming home on May 29 – and he is “doing fantastic”.
“He is a miracle. The amount of people who were willing him on,” said Ms Lawlor, a former president of the Camogie Association.
A trained nurse now working in Center Parcs in Longford, she said before the illness struck her husband was fit and healthy with no underlying health problems.
He’d had a high temperature which persisted but was not in any respiratory distress. By day seven, he hadn’t got any worse – but he wasn’t getting any better.
She borrowed a pulse oximeter, which monitors oxygen levels in the bloodstream, from a neighbour. “When I got the readings they were too low,” she said. “It would indicate on the inside he was in distress, but he wasn’t indicating it on the outside.”
She rang her GP, and when the case was triaged by public health, they were allocated a room in the emergency department (ED).
“We were in ED at 5pm and by 10.30 he was in ICU,” said Ms Lawlor.
After returning home, she rang at 2am to find out how he was, and “they said that they were starting to put him on a ventilator”.
Mr Lawlor’s health had deteriorated rapidly. In total, the retired managing director of Trend Technologies in Mullingar spent 39 days in ICU and eight days on a medical ward, and then was lucky to get a rehab bed in Longford, where he spent 24 days and from where he walked out with the aid of a stick. “He had to do a lot of work to get to that place where he walked out the other day,” said Ms Lawlor.
“When he started to come round, he was in a wheelchair for a while, he was on a frame, he was then on two crutches, and now on one stick.”
She said that on average people would be seven to 14 days on a ventilator, so “32 days was an incredible amount of time”.
She said that while he was on the apparatus, her husband was unconscious. “You are heavily sedated to be on a ventilator in the first place,” she said.
“I sent a letter to him every day. The nurses were great. They were reading it – you don’t know what people can hear. But I was just trying to say what was going on here, and my children would send a message to him.”
She was able to see Mr Lawlor on Facetime too: “He didn’t know I was there, but I could see him.
“When he went into hospital we weren’t in full lockdown, so him coming out to where we are at now, and the social distancing and all that, it was a learning thing.”
Ms Lawlor paid tribute to the support she got from her neighbours, family and friends. She also thanked medical, nursing and rehab staff for all their care.
The couple, who will be 37 years married this year, have four children – Róisin (35) based in Germany, Ciaran (32) in Singapore, Éamonn (27) in Glasgow, and Colm (25) in college in Sligo. Ms Lawlor said she and Dónal were hoping they would be able to travel to Spain next year for their annual trip walking the Camino pilgrimage path.