BFGW star Paddy is back in hospital
BIG Fat Gypsy Weddings star Paddy Doherty is back in hospital weeks after falling seriously ill with coronavirus.
The Celebrity Big Brother winner has released a video in which he explains he has had to return to hospital for treatment after suffering shortness of breath.
The star, who previously lived at Riverside Caravan Park in Queensferry, Flintshire, was rushed to hospital in January with double pneumonia and Covid-19.
Medics gave the bare-knuckle boxer just a 50% chance of survival at the time, but the TV star said “superhuman” doctors and nurses saved him.
But now he has had to return to the Countess of Chester Hospital after suffering breathing issues.
A video released by Mr Doherty on his Facebook page yesterday showed him in a hospital bed and was titled “thought all was fine but here I am back in the hospital. Crazy.”
In the video, the star struggles for breath and suffers a coughing fit as he takes in oxygen from a machine.
He begins by saying his previous coronavirus infection was causing him to be “short of breath” so he had gone into hospital for assistance.
He said: “I’ll be out in the morning. Just be careful everyone. I’m worse than a cat. A cat’s got seven lives I’ve got 100 lives. “Catch you all later. Be lucky.” Last month, Mr Doherty, who now lives in Chester, said he would be “forever” indebted to the NHS for saving his life.
In an interview with the Daily Star, he said: “The doctors and nurses were all around me.
“I felt like I was paralysed in my body because I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t raise my hand, my head or even speak. I had no strength.
“The doctors were putting all these drips in me and I thought ‘this is it’.
“They gave me some drugs and said if they didn’t work I’d have to go on a ventilator.”
IN JANUARY 2021, 10 months after the coronavirus pandemic began, funeral director Gareth Jenkins buried three husbands and wives in joint double funerals. This, he says, is the devastating reality of the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in Wales.
For more than 40 years, Gareth has supported families on their difficult journeys to say their final goodbyes to loved ones. He has offered a comforting hand, a subtle nod of reassurance and, for the most part, been with the families every step of the way.
But since last March, the personal touches usually afforded to funerals have gone.
In their place are hearse drivers alone, services beamed out digitally for those not allowed to attend, and celebratory wakes banned.
Strict government guidance has turned celebrations of life into formalities. Often attended by only a few. Unable to embrace, or offer comfort to each other. Keeping distance at two metres.
In his four decades in the role, Gareth says he has never known a year such as the one we have endured.
As of yesterday, there had been 4,961 deaths with coronavirus in Wales, according to figures from Public Health Wales.
The true figure, according to the Office for National Statistics using a different higher.
“The virus dipped quite a bit in the summer but this second wave has been a lot worse, there’ve been a lot more deaths,” said Gareth who runs Gareth A Jenkins Baglan Funeral Home, near Port Talbot.
“I caught it myself from one of the families I visited to arrange a funeral and, although I wasn’t hospitalised with it, I’m still suffering with long Covid – a niggly cough, a bit of a fuzzy head, things like that.
“To put it into perspective at one point 80% of our mortuary, which was almost full, was made up of Covid deaths.
“In January I buried three husbands and wives in double funerals. Already that’s six from one community.”
While for many of us, the second wave seemed to take hold gradually, for funeral directors the impact was sudden, says Gareth.
“It wasn’t a gradual thing really, it methodology, is even seemed as though it was a sudden burst and the second wave started virtually overnight.
“January was a very upsetting month. It’s so sad, it’s awful.”
Last year, the Welsh Government issued guidelines on who should attend funerals.
The exact number varies, depending on the size of the building.
Numbers must be kept to a minimum though, with the two-metre social distancing rule applied.
Gareth says he mainly works in Margam Crematorium where the limit on mourners is set at 20.
“Obviously we’ve had to adapt emotionally to how we are able to conduct these things, but also practically too – we’ve had to buy lots of equipment to be able to broadcast proceedings.
“For us in Margam the number has always been a maximum of 20 people so, from that, people have been finding new ways to honour people.
“Even in a funeral I was at this morning, there were mistakenly 21 people in attendance and we couldn’t start until I asked somebody to leave.
“That is the most difficult part, I’m not that kind of person.”
Gareth says that restrictions mean people are finding new ways to honour people, and says he doubts funerals will go back to how they were.
“What a lot of people have been doing now is standing out in the streets around the home or on the route and I think it might even stay like that.
“It’s horrendous not being able to put my arm around people and comfort them, it’s not what we want to do