Midwife so ill with Covid she wrote goodbye letters to her family
TODAY, five months after testing positive for Covid19, Sharon Geggus is pushed in a wheelchair down to the beach near her home in Llanelli and is able to walk about 600m before having to stop.
The 48-year-old is able to climb up the stairs, sleep in her own bed, speak to her two children, Tillie, 22, and Harry, 24, without the use of a small whiteboard and get in and out of the shower on her own.
But there was a time when these simple, everyday routines were not only things that she couldn’t do, but things she thought she would never do again.
“I thought, that’s it, I was going to die. I didn’t think I was coming out of it,” said Sharon of the moment doctors said she would need to be put on a ventilator.
“So I asked for a piece of paper and wrote a little note to my children and my husband.”
The mum-of-two began to feel sick on Monday, September 14, and was asked to stay home from her work as a community midwife and get tested for Covid-19.
“Because I felt really sick, I just thought it was a bug or something because I didn’t really think of sickness as a Covid symptom.”
But during the course of the week Sharon’s symptoms became more serious and, by the Saturday, a doctor told her to come into Prince Philip Hospital, Llanelli, immediately after she phoned the 111 NHS helpline.
“I was hot to the touch and it felt like someone was sitting on my chest.
“When the doctor heard me breathe they told me to come in straightaway and then I was told that I had a positive Covid result,” said Sharon, who is originally from London.
With a temperature of 40.8 and oxygen saturation levels at around 70% – the normal blood saturation levels are 95%-100% – Sharon was immediatley attached to a variety of different wires and given a cannula.
“It came on all of a sudden, one minute I was ok and then I was being strapped up to different wires and time blurred into one. I was given a CPAP mask, but it was really uncomfortable and scratched all my face and then got the full face mask, which was quite scary because I am claustrophobic,” added Sharon.
After a week at the hospital and being one of the only Covid-positive patients in the building, Sharon started feeling better. “I thought, ‘I’m going to be fine’. I was talking and feeling ok and they said that I should be good to go later, and then it just all changed and I took a turn for the worse. They said, ‘We need to get you on a ventilator’, but I thought that meant I wouldn’t come off of it, so I didn’t want to.
“I asked the doctor, ‘If I was your family member, what would you do?’ and they said ‘I’d put you on a ventilator’, so I agreed.
“I thought, that’s it, I was going to die. I didn’t think I was coming out of it. So I asked for a piece of paper and wrote a little note to my children and my husband.”
The midwife spent days in the ITU, but doesn’t remember anything about her time there and doesn’t even recall being on FaceTime with her family.
However, things went from bad to worse when Sharon’s condition deteriorated and her lungs couldn’t cope.
She was driven in an ambulance to St Thomas’ Hospital in London to be put on an ECMO (Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation) machine, which is used as mechanical support for patients experiencing severe respiratory failure.
Many ECMO patients are on the machine for around five to six days but Sharon was using the machine for 28 days.
Towards the end of October, after being in the London hospital for nearly a month, Sharon awoke, not knowing where she was or how she got there.
Sharon said: “I couldn’t remember anything. I woke up and they said I’d been there for a month and I couldn’t believe it, a month of my life that I couldn’t remember.”
During the course of her time on the ECMO machine, Sharon’s husband Phil was told that they did not think she would survive. Thankfully, at the beginning of November, her condition stabilised enough for her to be sent back to Prince Philip Hospital.
“I got back to Llanelli and realised that I’d missed my daughter’s birthday but was finally able to FaceTime my family. I couldn’t speak, but luckily I know sign language. I used a whiteboard as well and my family and the staff could lip-read me quite well.”
Slowly, the midwife, who also works at Glangwili Hospital, was able to move her body and eat again. After being so close to death, staff at Prince Philip Hospital started calling her the “Miracle Miracle Midwife”.
“I was out of it for so long and didn’t realise what was going on, so I don’t think I know how ill I was,” said Sharon.
By the beginning of December, Sharon had been transferred to the rehab ward
in
Prince Philip Hospital, learned to walk again and took her first steps in months on December 1.
After nearly three months in hospital, the 47-year-old, who turned 48 while in hospital, was able to leave Prince Philip Hospital and go home to her family.
She was on oxygen, walking with a frame, unable to climb the stairs, taking a variety of different medications – but she was home, something that she didn’t think would be possible at one point.
“I had tested negative to Covid, but it’s the aftermath of Covid which is worse. I’d had two different types of pneumonia, my chest had been filled with fluids. It affected my kidneys, liver, blood levels, I was on dialysis, I lost a lot of hair, it affected everything.”
But thankfully, tests on her chest have shown no fibrosis or scarring of the lungs that suggest longterm damage – another miracle, doctors have told her. Due to the nature and severity of her case, Sharon is now part of two research programmes in a bid to help doctors learn more about the virus.
But Sharon doesn’t believe that her case is all down to miracles – she said that both the staff at the hospitals and the timeline of when she caught the virus are the reasons she is still alive today.
“I think I’m very lucky to have had it when I did because the second wave hadn’t reached its peak.
“When I left the hospital, I saw it start to fill up again. I was very lucky with the timing and don’t know if I’d be here if it was a different time.
“I could never thank the staff enough. Being a midwife, you care how you would like to be cared for, but when you are on the other side of it you really can’t thank them enough.
“Whether it was young lads or women, they were always there to hold my hand, nothing was too much for them.”
Sharon said all the staff at both Prince Philip Hospital and St Thomas’ made her feel less alone during her three-month stint.
“That human contact was really important and kept me going. That and speaking with my family over FaceTime – my family were everything, they are my absolute rock,” she added.
Now, Sharon is concentrating on rebuilding her stamina and strength and learning to walk again.
“Walking up the stairs still leaves me out of breath and my back hurts after walking for a while. I’m still really stiff but I have a really positive outlook and know I’ll be able to do it.
“Hopefully my story is a positive one because it’s happened, it’s behind me now and shows that people can beat it.”
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