Mum with incurable lung disease tells of beating coronavirus
WHEN Sandra Lowe was taken to hospital with coronavirus, she feared it was the end.
Surrounded by paramedics in full PPE as she struggled to breathe, Sandra said goodbye to her family before being taken to Stepping Hill Hospital.
Sandra, 61, suffers with Bullous Lung Disease, a condition with no cure that causes her lungs to collapse.
When COVID-19 started to spread across the UK, the mum-of-three knew she was among the most at risk.
Despite isolating immediately, Sandra and her husband Stephen both caught the virus in March.
Sandra, from Marple, became seriously ill and found it difficult to breathe.
“I had been isolating for two weeks because I knew if I got it, I wouldn’t be able to fight it,” she said.
“I think I must have caught it from my husband because he had been going to the shops.
“I started with the fever, shivering and shaking. My husband also had it, though his symptoms were completely different to mine. He just developed this dreadful cough - it didn’t incapacitate him like it did me. I was at home for around 10 days.
“I’m normally the type of person who does their hair and makeup every morning.
“With COVID, I couldn’t shower for five days. Even cleaning my teeth took a massive amount of energy. All I could do is lie in bed and take shallow breaths.
“I’ve had many lung operations and pneumonia before: this was far worse.”
Sandra became more ill and was initially treated at home for pneumonia.
But she became too weak to stay at home and was taken to Stepping Hill Hospital via ambulance.
“The paramedics who came out to assess me were absolutely amazing,” says Sandra. “When you’re in that situation you are so helpless, but you want people to stay away from you so they don’t get it too.”
Sandra was taken to A&E at Stepping Hill where she was placed on oxygen.
“I just couldn’t get my breath,” she said. While I was on A&E I was seen by all sorts of different health care professionals; people from all over the world.
“I remember they moved a patient from the bay opposite where I was being looked after.
“Three men arrived in their full PPE to clean it down. They washed the curtains, the walls, the floor. Every inch of that bay was stripped and cleaned. It brought me to tears because they were all trying so hard to keep everyone safe. They were all so pleasant even though they were dealing with this invisible killer on a daily basis.”
Sandra says one of the most difficult moments was when she agreed to a ‘do not resuscitate’ order after a difficult conversation with doctors.
“That really brought the seriousness of it home for me,” says Sandra.
“They said my lungs were full of Bullous, Covid and pneumonia and that it would be very difficult for them to resuscitate me.
“At that point I didn’t have any fight in me.”
Sandra was transferred to a dedicated coronavirus ward where she was treated alongside five other patients.
She was too ill to speak to her husband or family members over the phone.
“This illness really does take everything away from you.
“I went in with nothing apart from my phone. My hair was like a bird’s nest at the back and a chip pan at the front because it hadn’t been washed for days. I sent my husband a text asking if he could bring some shampoo and a towel for me. I couldn’t ring him because I was so out of breath. One of the lowest points was when he came in to drop my stuff off.
“He wasn’t allowed on the ward, of course, but they let me wave at him through the glass. I blew him a kiss and that was it. I didn’t know whether I would see him again.”
Sandra was treated among other gravely ill coronavirus patients - two died while she was there.
“As a patient it’s quite frightening,” says Sandra.
“The lady opposite me died and the lady beside me died too.”
Sandra was put on Oxygen and a nebuliser for three days, as well as amoxicillin for the pneumonia. Against the odds Sandra fought off COVID-19 and was discharged from Stepping Hill on Sunday, April 12.
She still has breathing difficulties and believes it will take her a long time to recover physically and mentally from her ordeal. “In some ways I am traumatised by what happened,” she adds.
“It’s very hard when you’re lying alone on a ward putting all your effort into breathing. There’s a fine line between sharing the reality of it and frightening people. But I think it’s important that people realise how horrendous this illness is.
“There’s nothing they can really do when you have it. There’s no magic medicine to cure it.
“It’s a lottery between who survives and who doesn’t, and I count my survival as a miracle.
“I want people to know how amazing the NHS staff and how thankful I am to everyone at Stepping Hill.
“What they are doing is truly amazing.”