Happy returns and a remarkable return
DAVID, 92, RECOVERS FROM COVID-19 AND LEAVES HOSPITAL IN TIME TO CELEBRATE WIFE’S BIRTHDAY
A 92-YEAR-OLD Ickenham man who has beaten coronavirus has been able to return home in time to celebrate his wife’s 93rd birthday today.
David Helden was discharged from Hillingdon Hospital on Monday, April 6, after being treated for the respiratory disease for a week.
The retired surveyor was in critical care for several days with the illness, which started with fevers and feeling ill for a week before he was admitted to hospital.
His wife, Ruth, called NHS 111 after he began struggling to breathe and was taken to the hospital via ambulance, which arrived within 20 minutes, the couple’s daughter, Lois, recalled.
David and Ruth Helden will be celebrating their 54th wedding anniversary this summer after David recovered from coronavirus
She added: “This time last week he was saying: ‘I don’t think I’m going to get through this.’ It was a very worrying time. Now he is on the road to recovery.
“We were thinking the worst when he was critical for a number of days but about the middle of the week in hospital the team taking care of him said he was past the critical point.
“Although he was still struggling to sleep and eat, by the Friday or Saturday [April 4-5] he began to feel a bit better and to sound more like himself, and he began eating a bit more.”
Mr Helden, who grew up near Ruislip during the Blitz, had been fit and healthy, and is unsure where he might have been infected with Covid-19.
As a member of Waterloo Road Church in Uxbridge, Lois said her dad’s faith and support from the church and neighbours helped him through.
And she is looking forward to giving him a long overdue cake for his birthday, which was in March, but she was forced to freeze it due to selfisolation.
As well as birthday celebrations, the Heldens will be celebrating their 54th wedding anniversary this summer.
Lois has thanked all the staff at the Hillingdon Hospital Acute Medical
Unit and Bevan Ward.
“We are all so grateful to the hospital and all the staff for taking great care of him,” she said.
“We know how busy they are, and we are just so thankful that he pulled through, which is thanks to the amazing care that he got.”