My husband fought for his life while I was pregnant
Kate Matheson was expecting, when her partner was rushed to intensive care with swine flu. She explains how Carrie Symonds will be feeling
When I heard the news that the Prime Minister had been moved into intensive care, I immediately thought of his fiancée, Carrie Symonds. My heart goes out to her, because I know all too well how it feels to be midway through a pregnancy, while your other half is lying in a hospital bed, on oxygen. I wouldn’t wish that particular hell on my worst enemy.
Eleven years ago, when I was eight weeks’ pregnant with our third child, my husband Nicholas contracted swine flu. It was October half term and both Nicholas, who was then 44, and our five-year-old had come down with flu-like symptoms. There wasn’t the same level of panic as there is around coronavirus. We just laid low for a couple of days, assuming it would pass.
I got Nicholas to sleep in the spare room anyway because, frankly, he was snotty and disgusting, and I was going through the phase of pregnancy when you just feel exhausted and nauseous the entire time. By the end of the week, he seemed to be rallying. Then one night something shifted. Suddenly, he stopped being able to breathe properly.
I drove him to the GP first thing the following morning, after taking the children to nursery and school. I was just going to drop Nicholas and then head to work, but something told me to find a parking spot and wait. Not long after, Nicholas was walking out of the surgery towards me, with the doctor in tow. The GP said: “I think you need to take him to hospital.” Even then, I don’t think either of us were too worried. I still feel guilty about this, but I left him outside A&E, waved goodbye and drove off.
I got a call from the hospital a couple of hours later saying: “Mrs Matheson your husband is quite poorly so we’re going to admit him.” We had both completely underestimated the scale of his illness. This was my super-fit, strong as an ox, fit as a flea husband. He was a non-smoker, who rarely drank and cycled or ran into work every day. He had walked into the hospital of his own accord. How could they be admitting him?
In reality, his youth and health were hiding what was really going on. By the time Nicholas got to hospital, such was the level of his cardiac distress (due to a lack of oxygen in his lungs) that they thought he’d had a heart attack. One of his lungs had collapsed and the other was two thirds full of gunk. He had developed pneumonia as a side effect of the flu.
By the following morning he had deteriorated so rapidly they made the decision to sedate and intubate him. He was moved to intensive care. Then followed four weeks where I slept in my clothes with my phone in my hand, in case I had a call in the middle of the night. I’m not easily shaken, but it was very frightening. I went into survival mode, trying to stay positive for the children while their dad fought for his
I sometimes wonder if that period of stress and panic affected our baby
life. Nicholas was in an isolation room and though I could visit him – which is more than Carrie can do – I had to scrub in and out, and wasn’t allowed to touch him.
I told everyone I was pregnant, even though I was only eight weeks along. I needed to make sure that our friends and family knew everything and could offer support.
Being pregnant is tough. You suddenly have no control over your emotions or body. Your sleep pattern is shot to pieces; your hormones can make you weep or vomit. You’re exhausted and everything is uncomfortable. Add fear-induced adrenalin and stress into the mix and you’ve got a pretty nasty cocktail.
I remember just sticking the boys in front of the TV, because all I had the energy to do between the endless journeys to and from the hospital was lie in the bath.
What’s worse for Carrie is that this is her first pregnancy and therefore almost certainly more challenging emotionally. She must be so worried and to be dealing with it without the father by her side will be very difficult. When Nicholas was in hospital, I was lucky to be able to have a girlfriend move in with us for a couple of days, and plenty of family around to help out. We ate the contents of the freezer and muddled through. I can only hope that Carrie has a similarly strong circle of friends and family.
For four weeks, I just about kept it together, as Nicholas struggled away in the ICU, at one point coming off a ventilator but then going back on it when his body failed to breathe on its own. I’m not sure I did a very good job of being calm for the boys. I remember my youngest son saying: “I don’t want daddy to die!”
“He’s not going to die,” I said, trying to reassure him. “He’s not.”
Eventually, after various interventions, Nicholas came off the ventilator and began breathing for himself. He became a bit of a celebrity because his was the most serious swine flu case in Bristol that hadn’t ended in death.
Six weeks after he was admitted, Nicholas came home – albeit thin and with various impressive scars, plus a gaping wound in his neck where his tracheotomy had been. He was weak and could barely walk, which was tricky seeing as we lived in a threestorey house.
But I helped to rehabilitate him at home and slowly he got better. By the time the baby was due, his life was beginning to resemble something akin to normal.
We talked about what happened to us every day for five years. We’re of the “get on with it” school of thought, but there was an awful lot to deal with – our own distress, but also that of our loved ones. A lot of people had been impacted by what happened to Nicholas. It shook them, I think, to see a man so young and fit being so debilitated.
Sometimes I wonder if that period of stress and panic affected the baby boy who arrived six months later (we had a fourth son two years after that). Monty is nearly 10 and he’s a delightful boy, but he is different to his brothers somehow. I worry that could be a result of prenatal stress, but I suppose we’ll never know.
Certainly people live through more challenging things than what I went through, and that is what many will say of the Prime Minister’s fiancée in the coming days. Like Carrie, I wasn’t in insecure housing, and I was never worried we weren’t going to eat. There is stress and there’s stress.
But don’t underestimate how hard this will be for her. I only hope that Mr Johnson recovers swiftly – we need an effective government to guide us through the coronavirus crisis, but Carrie needs the father of her baby back home and safe.
As told to Eleanor Steafel