Linda: ‘I’m just so glad to be here’
Model Linda Lusardi is back home, but recalling her recent brush with death, she couldn’t hold back the tears…
Coronavirus is making headlines daily. But thankfully, among the tragic stories of loss, there are also stories of hope – one of those is Linda Lusardi.
At one point, Linda was so ill with Coronavirus, she feared she was going to die. But she fought a hard battle – and won.
Speaking from the home she shares with her talent agent husband, Sam Kane, the emotional 61-year-old recalled the start of their nightmare.
‘ We were in separate rooms, vomiting with diarrhoea. When we phoned 111 they said they are not Corona symptoms
– they weren’t at the time – so we carried on battling through.
‘They said take paracetamol and drink plenty of water. But every time we drank water we were vomiting it up, until I was getting breathless and getting severe chest pains.’
Eventually, Linda called 999, and when ambulance drivers arrived and did tests, they found the couple had ‘practically zero oxygen’ in their blood.
Their terrified son, Jack, 20, watched his parents being marched out of the door and into an ambulance, by two masked paramedics.
The couple were taken to hospital, but Sam recovered quicker than his wife.
In the days that followed, Sam feared Linda was ‘at death’s door’, but with the right treatment, the mumof-two pulled through.
‘I thank God,’ she says simply. ‘I am one of the lucky ones.’
Fighting back tears, Linda recalled the moment they entered hospital: ‘Sam and I were both in A&E, looking at each other thinking, “Are we going to make it?”’
And one conversation with a doctor she will never forget. ‘I asked, “Am I going to get through this?” and he said, “I’ll be honest, I can’t promise you anything, you are 61 and we just don’t know what we’re dealing with”.
‘At that point, I thought I’d had it. I rang Sam downstairs and said, “You had better come up because I don’t know if I’m going to make it”.’
Linda’s adoring husband was wheeled up to her bedside, by a doctor.
Sam told her: ‘You can’t give up, think about the children. They can’t lose their mum.’
Linda didn’t give up, but breathing proved hard. It’s ‘like having an elephant sitting on your chest’, she explained, admitting she narrowly escaped being placed on a ventilator.
Of the NHS workers that saved her, she said: ‘The people that held my hand and told me the Lord would get me through this were unbelievable.’
When she finally came home, Linda simply broke down.
‘I sat in the garden with the sun on my face, listening to the birds. I held Jack’s hand and said, “I’m just so glad I’m here”.’
‘I thank God [that I’m alive] – I am one of the lucky ones’