‘I feared she would die, but now I want her story to give people hope’

It’s the middle of the night and Linda Crichton, unable to sleep, is desperately searching for some hope. She’s just been told her daughter Natalie, who has down’s syndrome, is likely to die, alone, of Covid-19 on an intensive care unit.

In utter despair, and feeling helpless at home, she scours site after site online, longing to find stories of survival which will give her some glimmer of light in what she now says were her darkest hours.

She admits it was hard to find any. Natalie, a healthy 30-year-old who loves to dance, had pneumonia on both her lungs caused by Covid-19 and was in a coma on a ventilator.

Linda, unable to be at her bedside due to restrictions, had been told by a consultant by phone that her daughter was critically ill and her chances of survival slim.

“It’s like your worst nightmare,” she said. “You feel so helpless and numb.

“It was so distressing - the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to deal with in my life.

“I called up a nurse from social services and asked if I could go to see Natalie, because if she’s not going to survive, then we would like to see her.

“My son was really distressed. He was saying ‘Mum, can’t we bring her home?’”

But as for all families of

Covid-19 patients in ICU - and despite the fact Natalie has learning difficulties, meaning she needs more support than others - the answer was no. Natalie had previously been very healthy, only visiting the doctors once a year for her flu jab.

But she had started suffering symptoms of coronavirus at the end of March.

She was checked over twice after calls to NHS 111, but by March 31 had become even more unwell, with her breathing rapid, so Linda called 999. “A CT scan was taken and it showed she had pneumonia on both lungs,” she said.

“It was so stressful. She didn’t understand what was happening to her and was unable to verbalise like we would, and that made me feel absolutely terrible.”

Natalie was initially given oxygen on a ward at Margate’s QEQM Hospital but with her condition deteriorating she was intubated, put on a ventilator and taken to ICU.

“When they sedated her I held her hand and then I left as it would have been too difficult to watch the tube go in,” said Linda.

“As I walked away I was crying and one of the cleaners called after me ‘you want a cup of tea?’ and I just thought how kind all these people are.”

That night, Linda received the devastating call to say Natalie was critically ill and that not many people with Covid-19 who are put on a ventilator survive.

She admits she dreaded the phone ringing again.

The mum-of-four, who lives in Broadstairs, says another huge concern was how her daughter, rarely without a family member by her side, would be feeling.

“We felt distraught knowing how frightened she would be in ICU and desperately helpless not being able to do anything,” she said.

“I found a report in the New York Times about how people on ventilators, even though they can’t see anything, can still hear.

“It made me so distressed to think how scared Natalie would be. It’s almost like being kidnapped - not being able to hear us, but all these strange voices and machines. I thought ‘we’ve got to get our voices to her on ICU’ but you’re not allowed WiFi there.”

So Linda instead had family and friends record get well messages which were put on a CD, and her nephew, a paramedic, took the disc and a CD player in.

The staff at East Kent Mencap in

Thanet, a group Natalie attends, also put together her favourite songs and spoke about what they mean to her.

“Knowing my daughter could now hear our voices and the music she enjoys brought us all considerable comfort,” said Linda.

“A kind consultant also set up a video link so every day he would phone me and I could see her.”

Days passed and Natalie surprised medics when her condition started to improve.

An attempt was made to take her off the ventilator, but when she came round, terrified at being surrounded by strangers in unknown surroundings, she tried to pull her tubes out and get out of bed.

“They had to put her back on the ventilator,” said single parent Linda.

“I said, ‘Every time you try to take her off, if she doesn’t have someone she knows, she’ll be frightened and she’s not going to stay calm’.

“I have pre-existing health conditions so I couldn’t go but the consultant eventually agreed that her dad could go in.”

But just as the family’s hopes were rising, Natalie developed ventilator-associated pneumonia and was put back on it for another eight days.

When she eventually came off the machine, she was moved to a ward, but being so weak, suffered a third bout of pneumonia.

Linda said: “After being on a ventilator for 15 days she couldn’t even lift her hands off the bed or talk because she was so weak and had muscle loss.

“She’s had to learn how to sit up, walk and talk again.”

Linda was finally allowed by her side on the non-Covid Quex Ward, but admits she was too anxious to think her daughter was out of the woods.

“I was too frightened to build my hopes up in case she got very ill again,” she said.

But last Thursday, five weeks after being admitted - two of those spent in a coma - Natalie came home.

“I never thought this day would hap

Linda Crichton thought her daughter was going to die Natalie back home with brother Harry