Arms by his side with the could do was watch and wait’
covered in what looked like thick smoke. I was reminded of the billowing smoke of industrial chimneys from factories in the area where I grew up in Lancashire. Thick and dense and choking.
PJ told me it was the accumulation of secretions from his lungs. The organs were not working properly, the virus was eating them away as we spoke, which meant oxygen could not get around his body and the ventilator, which had been doing his breathing, was now unable to cope with the onset of pneumonia. Covid-19 did this.
PJ again whispered to his colleagues and they pulled up Krishnapillai’s gown to expose his chest. They started massaging his flesh to try to dislodge the fluid.
Time was running out, not just in the frantic real world of the doctors and nurses, six, seven, eight, now clustered around this bed, but also in Krishnapillai’s floating world where his sleep was heading towards a permanence. His lungs were beginning to pack up, but there was one last throw of the dice. Proning, the turning of the patient on to his front to help free up his lungs to pump oxygen.
It was a hail Mary pass and the kind of procedure consultant Nick Bunker told me was rarely used before Covid-19 came along. I counted the nurses and doctors around the bed now, 10 in all, and having grabbed the sheets around Krishnapillai, they manoeuvred him, rolling him over.
He was now laying on his front, arms by his side with the palms upwards, ventilator tubes protruding from his mouth. All the medics could do now was watch and wait.
We filmed at the Royal London Hospital from May 12 to May 22. It then took several days to get the permission of the families who appeared on camera to show the footage on BBC News.
It’s a long process that sometimes involved Zoom calls to continents thousands of miles away to get approval. In one case we waited until two hours before broadcast before we had consent.
During our visits we spoke with doctors and nurses about their fears of a new spike in infections. We were told about how they coped with the peak of the pandemic a month earlier.
The doubling of patients in the intensive care unit, usually around 40, then suddenly up to 90 with beds running out and patients dying every day. The stress and pressure, hour after hour, day in day out for weeks, the psychological toll of all the illness, and pain and suffering. The endless speed of time on the Covid wards.
I’ve seen post-traumatic stress disorder play out. I’ve reported on conflicts around the world from Iraq and Afghanistan to Bosnia, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Syria and Libya.
The fight against Covid-19 is a war, and the nurses and doctors of our NHS are our army tackling this invisible killer. Some staff will never get over what they’ve seen.
My admiration for them knows no bounds. One nurse, the name Tish written on her disposable apron, started combing the hair of a patient oblivious to the tenderness in the deep sleep of ventilation, as if he was a child, to make him presentable she thought for the cameras. It was so touching, and made me cry. Twenty-four hours later Krishnapillai wasn’t getting any better.
He’d never recover, his lungs were too scarred and diseased and inflamed. His family was called and told the news and that night his ventilator was switched off. I spoke to the nurse who held his hand as he died, Senior Sister Becky Smith.
She said it was quick as the beeping of the ventilator machine stopped. She then washed his body, along with another nurse, ready for the morgue.
In the UK the peak of the pandemic is passed.this is desperately needed good news.
Our country is beginning to open up after lockdown yet this virus hasn’t gone away. It may be here to stay although hopefully a vaccine can be found.
But the 10 days of filming at the Royal London is something I’ll never forget…