Southend woman's battle against long Covid-19

Westcliff resident Sola Doyle spent almost 60 days in Southend Hospital when she was struck down by coronavirus as the pandemic first swept the country.

The 58-year-old mother-of-two was rushed to the hospital’s intensive therapy unit (ITU) on March 30, 2020.

“I remember first feeling ill in February,” Sola recalled. “I had a persistent cough, so I went into isolation. I felt lethargic and run down, which continued into March

“The day before I went into hospital I was burning up. I couldn’t sleep, it was like my bed was on fire. I just knew that there was something wrong. I was so hot and I couldn’t breathe properly.

Sola in Decemeber 2019 before she fell ill

“I was coughing constantly, it didn’t stop. My chest was in so much pain. I didn’t know what was wrong I just knew that something was wrong. At that point I decided I needed to dial 999.”

Sola was taken to Southend Hospital and says the last thing she remembers is being wheeled through a hospital corridor before waking up 32 days later.

“I remember lying in a bed, opening my eyes, and someone saying ‘welcome back Sola’, I thought she was mad, I didn’t know what she meant,” Sola said.

“She explained I had been there for 32 days. I thought I had only just gone to sleep, how had it been 32 days?”

That was not the end of Sola’s stay in hospital. It would be another 27 days before she was discharged.

In May, she had to undergo a tracheostomy – where doctors created an opening at the front of her neck so a tube could be inserted into the windpipe to assist her breathing.

Her tracheostomy scar

When she was finally able to go home, hospital staff lined the corridor for a round of applause following her miraculous recovery.

Over a year later, and Sola still suffers from the effects of long Covid.

“I’ve been to a heart clinic, a physio, it’s hard. I get very tired. I still have a wheeze and it’s sometimes difficult for me to comprehend things,” she said. “I forget things, I get angry because I forget things. Because I am wheezing, phone calls can be difficult.”

And Sola is urging anyone who has yet to be vaccinated to get their jabs and avoid going through what suffering similar to hers.

“It really annoys me when people say there is no such thing as Covid. I always say ‘come and chat with me’, because I had to have a tracheostomy and I have that scar for life, not to talk about the mental scars.

“Sometimes I fall asleep on my chair and I wake up with a start thinking ‘am I still alive?’ When I got back from hospital I couldn’t sleep for weeks out of fear.

“People that say that there is no Covid, I just pray that they never get it and understand how it feels, what it really is like.”