DAD TELLS OF COVID NIGHTMARE ON BIRTHDAY
Dad describes horrifying battle for life after infection
A DAD who feared he was going to die from Covid last night begged vaccine refusers to get the jag.
Alasdair Kilgour, 33, ended up in intensive care on his birthday after struggling to breathe with the virus.
And he is still suffering the devastating effects of Long Covid which have left him breathless, fatigued and struggling to cope with day to day living.
Alasdair, from Shotts in Lanarkshire, is still so poorly he is unable to look after his five-year-old son Cole on his own and relies on his mum Lorraine’s help.
Shock new figures from the Scottish Government earlier this week showed that one in three 18 to 29-year-olds and one in five 30 to 39-year-olds have not taken up the offer of a vaccine.
Yesterday he spoke for the first time about his battle with the virus in the hope of warning others about the threat corona presents to young people’s health.
Choking back tears, Alasdair said: “I remember thinking to myself, ‘I am gone’. I couldn’t see a way back from this.
“I couldn’t even function to open my phone up to make a call.
“I was breaking my heart in there, shouting for Cole. It was the worst experience of my life.” Alasdair cannot understand why some young adults are resisting vaccination. He told them: “Have
a read at my story and think for five minutes. “I am 33 and on my birthday I should have been celebrating with my mum and son. Instead, Cole was wondering if his dad would ever come home again to see him. “It could happen to anybody at any age.” On March 23, Alasdair was diagnosed with Covid and a day later his son also received a positive diagnosis. Alasdair said: “The only symptom I had at first was I slept really well but my legs were so tired. I had a bit of cough and sore throat but nothing to indicate what would happen 10 days later.”
They both went to self-isolate in Lorraine’s spare room in case they took a turn for the worse and needed help.
Cole developed a cough but was relatively unaffected. But Alasdair’s experience was very different.
He said: “My isolation was due to end on April 3 – two days before my birthday – but I didn’t feel great so I decided to give myself another couple of days.
“But on my birthday, all I did was sleep and have some drinks my mum left for me. I don’t remember much about the day at all but mum said she could hear my breathing in the next room.
“My dad died in 2016 and she described my breathing as being like his as he was dying. That was what alarmed her.
“She tried to speak to me but I was all over the place. I didn’t even know it was my birthday.”
Lorraine called an ambulance and by the time the paramedics arrived, Alasdair could not even remember his own name. His oxygen levels were below 70 per cent, his blood pressure was extremely low and his heart was racing.
He was rushed to Wishaw General’s
resuscitation room. He said: “I remember a nurse coming in to introduce herself to me in intensive care. She was in a hazmat suit.
“I was pretty much relying on oxygen to breathe. I was lying watching my body move. It was pretty scary watching it all happen and not being able to do anything about it.”
He was in ICU for eight days, unable to do anything for himself.
Alasdair added: “Cole knew how serious I was. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he saw me on Skype with the oxygen mask on my face. It broke his heart. And it broke mine when he said, ‘Daddy did I give you this? Did I do that to you?’”
Alasdair spent another seven days on the Covid ward but after only four days at home he was rushed back in unable to breathe because of a blood clot and pneumonia.
He said: “I witnessed a man in his 60s with no underlying health conditions dying of Covid in the bed facing me.
“The sound of his coughing will never leave me. He was a lovely man. He’d had his two injections, the second one two weeks before he was admitted to hospital. If he had got Covid a week later the immunity may have kicked in and he might still have been here.” He added: “I have won the battle with Covid but I have certainly not won the war because I am still fighting the effects of Long Covid.”
Data from Public Health Scotland shows just 69.7 of those aged 18 to 29 have had one jab and just 20.5 per cent have had two. Among the 30s, 80.8 per cent have had one but less than a third (32.1 per cent) have been double-jabbed.
Yesterday, there were another seven deaths and 1686 new cases. Murdo Fraser, the Scottish Conservatives’ Covid Recovery spokesman, said the country is “not making progress fast enough” as he called for “a much more aggressive targeted social media campaign” advertising jags for younger people.
Fraser said a vaccine passport or proof of a negative test to attend crowded settings such as nightclubs is a “reasonable proposition”, adding: “I think that is a reasonable trade-off for people.”
Health Secretary Humza Yousaf hinted the Scottish Government would not go down this path saying he was “sceptical” of any such plan, while First Minister Nicola Sturgeon mentioned the “ethical and equity” arguments against such a plan on Tuesday, although she insisted no decision had been taken.