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MANILA – He knew from the moment his doctor told him that he would have to be intubated that death would be a whisper away.
“I told him that if he did that, he would already have one foot in the grave,” recalls Judd de León, a recruiting specialist for the talent firm Cielo.
It was the middle of July. He had heard those stories about what a death sentence for Covid-19 patients was like to use a ventilator. So when his doctor told him his only option was that, he resisted.
His oxygen saturation level had plummeted to 67, when it should have been between 95 and 100.
“I felt like someone was strangling me,” he said.
But the idea of a thick plastic tube running down his nose and throat into his lungs terrified him too. Inside his head, he began to make plans for the funeral.
“I felt like if I kicked the bucket, it would be fine. My insurance would cover the hospital bill and my burial,” he said.
But his doctor insisted: “If he doesn’t, he will die.”
His sisters also pleaded with him. That tipped the balance.
“My mother had passed away eight months before and I saw how distraught my sisters were. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing them cry again if I died. We still had many things we wanted to do as a family.” Said Mr. de León, who has a partner.
He gave up. But, unconscious when he was hooked up to a ventilator, he awoke in a panic.
“I was alone. When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was the tube going down my throat. I was startled. I had the feeling that I was choking on that tube, and people were passing by. I was waving at them, and I wasn’t They saw. I was crying. I was very afraid of dying there alone, “he said.
De Leon didn’t think he would ever get Covid-19.
At 40, he was still young and fit. He ran marathons in less than five hours. He climbed mountains. He did not smoke or drink alcohol.
He had not left his apartment since the government placed the capital, Manila, in a generalized lockdown in mid-March. I would order everything online and sanitize everything that was delivered, reheating the food to make sure it was safe to eat.
If there was a culprit, he suspected it was from a delivery.
He spent nine days in intensive care, struggling with his thoughts and feeling like a rag doll. He was wearing nothing but a hospital gown and an adult diaper. He was unable to sit, stand, or walk to the bathroom. The nurses did everything.
Every six hours, a nurse fed him a milky solution through his nose tube. The liquid diet gave him diarrhea, he said, and a nurse had to constantly come clean him up.
“The first time my diaper was changed, I felt very vulnerable and powerless because I was naked and covered in poop,” he said.
Every day, seven to ten times a day, he had to suck fluid and phlegm out of his lungs.
“It felt like drowning for a minute or two,” he said.
Twice during one of these procedures, she felt her heart stop.
It wasn’t like in the movies, he said. There was no out-of-body experience. There was no light to attract him.
“Time slowed down. Everything turned gray. Everything slowed down and there was total silence,” he said.
To get through each day, she had an hour to use her phone. She made video calls to her family and friends, and checked their messages and social media feeds.
The nurses pushed him too. “They always told me I’m still young. I had no pre-existing conditions. My blood pressure and heart rate were fine. I had everything I needed to survive,” he said.
To give himself a boost, he framed his ordeal in the story of an anime, Haikyu. It was about a volleyball team that beat incredible odds to reach the top.
“Whenever he was short of breath, he would remember his one game, when, just when all seemed lost, they were somehow able to get up and win,” he said.
But by his seventh day in intensive care, he was so weak and exhausted that even hourly calls with his loved ones or his favorite anime couldn’t lift him.
“I didn’t want to fight anymore,” he said.
Fortunately, by then, her body had begun to respond to treatment with a cocktail of antiviral drugs and pain relievers. His tubes were removed on the ninth day and he was transferred to a normal ward a day later.
There, for eight days, he began to rebuild everything that Covid-19 had taken apart. He began to eat and bathe alone. The way. Respite.
In total, he was in the hospital for 20 days, but more than a month later, he is still struggling with the scars left by the coronavirus.
His heart and lungs still feel weak. Your doctor has advised you to start taking long walks, but the farthest you have gotten without running out of breath is right outside your apartment complex door.
His expenses amounted to 1.4 million pesos (S $ 40,000), depleting his savings.
“But that’s just money. The important thing is that I’m alive. This is an opportunity to rebuild,” he said in a Facebook post.
“Life is precious. Don’t waste it.”
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