‘I’m feeling really ill, I just came back from China’
When I was quarantined with suspected coronavirus it was like a scene from the film
Contagion, starring Gwyneth Paltrow. It happened so quickly. One minute I was dialling 111, the next I was walking into quarantine.
I had returned from a holiday in Australia via China and despite thinking I might have flu I managed to make it into work at my digital media agency in Westminster on Tuesday – and even met a few MPS in Parliament.
On Tuesday night, I woke up sweating and couldn’t breathe. The following morning, I called 111 and 10 minutes into the conversation they asked: “Have you been to China recently?” As soon as I said I had, they wanted to call an ambulance but as I live close to St Thomas’ Hospital I said I would get there myself. When I arrived I was so weak I had to lean against the wall. A doctor asked if I was OK, and when I replied: “I’m feeling really ill, I just came back from China,” he literally grabbed me by the arm and led me back outside. A nurse came out and gave me a mask and I was shown to a door around the back.
I was told to walk down a corridor and I arrived in a room with a bed in the middle with equipment all around it. There was a one-way glass window with an intercom so you could talk through the glass. I was feeling so poorly I curled up on the bed.
All I could hear was a noise like a vacuum cleaner. I later realised it was the sound of the doctor and nurse putting on their isolation suits. It was surreal. The glass suddenly went from being one-way to two-way and I saw all these people staring at me. The doctor and nurse came in wearing gear like they were walking on the moon. Their voices were muffled. I was delirious and I didn’t really understand what was going on.
I had cannulas inserted in both hands for blood to be taken. It was only when they said they had to send it to test for coronavirus that I started getting worried. Until that point, I was in denial. They put swabs up each nostril and in the back of my throat. They put each in a small bag, and dunked it in a solution to disinfect it before passing it back through the airlock. When they wrote notes, they would hold them up against the glass so the people outside could read them.
I saw lots of curious faces at the window, I felt like an exhibit. The doctor later told me I was the first person in the UK to be tested for coronavirus. It was an anxious three hour wait for the results. Although they said they couldn’t rule it out, it was unlikely I had the virus.
It was later revealed I had caught pneumonia. I was so relieved.