Boris: Doctors were ready to declare I’d died
BORIS Johnson has revealed that doctors were preparing to announce his death as he battled coronavirus.
The Prime Minister spoke for the first time about his time in intensive care, saying he needed ‘litres and litres’ of oxygen to survive.
He admitted that he was ‘not in brilliant shape’ and that contingency plans had been created in case the worst happened.
‘It was a tough old moment,’ Mr Johnson told The Sun on Sunday. ‘They had a strategy to deal with a “death of Stalin”type scenario.
‘I was not in particularly brilliant shape and I was aware there were contingency plans in place. The doctors had all sorts of arrangements for what to do if things went badly wrong.
‘They gave me a face mask so I got litres and litres of oxygen and for a long time I had that and the little nose jobbie.’
He added that he kept asking himself ‘How am I going to get out of this?’ during his life-ordeath struggle at St Thomas’ Hospital last month.
The worst moment was when there was a 50-50 chance that he would have to have a tube in his windpipe, he said.
‘It was hard to believe that in just a few days my health had deteriorated to this extent. I remember feeling frustrated. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting better.
‘But the bad moment came when it was 50-50 whether they were going to have to put a tube down my windpipe.
‘That was when they were starting to think about how to handle it presentationally. It was a tough old moment, I won’t deny it.’
His fiancee Carrie Symonds returned to No 10 yesterday with their son Wilfred, who was born 17 days after his father was discharged from hospital.
The couple gave him the middle name Nicholas – in recognition of doctors Nick Price and Nick Hart who saved the PM’s life in intensive care.
Mr Johnson, who returned to work last Monday after recuperating at his country house Chequers, said he was in awe of the staff who saved his life.
He added: ‘I can’t explain how it happened. All I can say is that I love the NHS and I owe everybody thing to them.’ He has previously praised the staff who saved his life, including two nurses who looked after him in the intensive care unit.
In recognition of the ‘exemplary’ care he received from staff at the hospital during his coronavirus treatment, Mr Johnson said: ‘I owe them my life.
‘I can’t thank them enough. I hope they won’t mind if I mention in particular two nurses who stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way.’
He named Jenny McGee from New Zealand and Luis Pitarma from Aveiro, Portugal.
‘The reason in the end my did start to get enough oxygen was because for every second of the night they were watching and they were thinking and they were caring and making the interventions I needed,’ he said.