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António Rodrigues, 53, an operational assistant at a school in Braga, is recovering from Covid-19 at the Centro de Rehabilitación Norte (CRN), in Gaia, in the Porto district. Lusa narrates the drama of those who, months after being infected, still suffer the consequences of this disease on their skin and rebel against those who devalue it.
“You take a pill and it’s good, right? I do not walk. There are those who say that they only catch those who are not strong. I went to the troops and they beat me, ”says António Rodrigues.
The operational assistant is “re-educating” the body. He decided to train his left hand to write, since he lost movements on the right side and because he does not admit the possibility of not returning to work as soon as possible.
“I want to be useful to my country, like my country, through hospitals, it is useful to me. They saved me and they continue to take care of me ”, he tells Lusa, while he is pedaling sitting in a chair and tells that he was in an induced coma“ for a few months because he was no longer breathing ”. He found out he was infected in late March. He was intubated on April 22.
“I did four tests and only the fourth was negative. I have an ulcer and bacteria. I was until October 15 at the Hospital de Braga. It is impossible to know where I got it [o vírus]. At the beginning of August he was not taking a step. Now I no longer lift my toes and move my right side worse. I remember having dreams. I remember having nightmares, but it’s over. It took a lot of effort to get up and now I’m getting up alone. I don’t feel tired anymore ”, he sums up Lusa.
“I don’t know where I got it [o vírus]. I know I haven’t been home since March 26. It disgusts me to know that there are those who devalue the covid. I put on a diaper and showered in bed until August. Taking the first shower [sentado e com ajuda] it was a joy ”, he concludes.
“People do not imagine what this disease is”
The symptoms of fever, fatigue and cough that have become months of intensive care and more months of rehabilitation after covid-19 infection translate into “moral authority”: “Project and take care of each other”, he asks the sick.
“If I endure another 20 years, I will never forget that time. People cannot imagine what this disease is, ”says Lusa Fernando Soares, 67, a retired bank employee and resident of Vila Nova de Gaia, in the Porto district.
He had “the fever and cough that is talked about a lot”, but also “hallucinations and psychological disorders” that led him to “imagine things that never existed”. After a month in intensive care and another in a ward at the Santos Silva Hospital, in Gaia, he recovers on an outpatient basis at the Centro de Rehabilitación del Norte (CRN).
“I have all the authority to ask everyone to be careful. I had moments when I didn’t know if I would survive. In physical and psychological terms, this disease is a brutality. I lost 18 kilos ”, he emphasizes after finishing the physiotherapy sessions, which restored the ability to stand up and do“ apparently banal things ”such as climbing stairs without feeling fatigued.
“I was in a coma for four months”
This capacity is not yet a reality for Rui Ribeiro (53 years old, resident in Porto) who is admitted to the CRN, but before he went through three hospitals, including São João, in Porto, where he was connected “to one of those machines which substitutes the function of the lungs and the heart, causing the blood to leave the body ”, the so-called ECMO, Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation.
“I was in a coma for four months. Those people saved my life several times. Now I know that there were times when I didn’t even move that I wasn’t going to spoil, ”he describes Lusa.
Sitting in a wheelchair because he still does not feel his legs on his knees, Rui multiplies the praise of health professionals and calls on those who deny the existence of the pandemic:
“An intensive care room is something very aggressive and complicated. The nurses and assistants work very hard. People have no idea. And they earn so little. Is incredible. I was sneezing, figuratively speaking, and I had three people around me ”, he describes.
Rui Ribeiro rejects the word “revolt” to describe the so-called “denialism” that is reflected in the anti-mask movements, among others, and admits that there are “many desperate people” due to the economic difficulties faced by measures such as those imposed by the state of emergency . implies, but also rejects the idea that this “is just a little one.”
The covid-19 pandemic caused at least 1,339,130 deaths derived from more than 55.6 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report prepared by the French agency AFP.
In Portugal, 3,632 people died from 236,015 confirmed cases of infection, according to the most recent bulletin from the Directorate General of Health.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
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