Coronavirus: I was unconscious for four days, UK-based Nigerian nurse recounts ordeal

May Toba, a Nigerian who works as a nurse in the UK, says it was hard for her to believe she had contracted COVID-19 when she started showing its symptoms.

Recounting her battle with the disease in an interview with The Nation, Toba, a mother of two, said she started with a bit of high temperature and her condition became worse as she had diabetes.

While narrating her COVID-19 experience, Toba said she laid unconscious for four days.

“I am diabetic; that’s what made mine worse. I was having a bit of temperature; I own a thermometer, so I checked myself and found that it was 38.4. Usually, temperature is supposed to be between 35 and 37.5. I checked the first day, took paracetamol; I kept monitoring it daily and it kept increasing,” she was quoted to have said.

“The next day, I decided to go shopping with my son. I didn’t isolate because, to be honest, I was in denial that it could be coronavirus. I thought it was common cold and general body weakness. So, I went shopping with my son, so that if London shuts down over the weekend, we would have food at home.

“I live in South-East London, so as we got to Woolich, I was short of breath and also couldn’t walk long distances without stopping to sit somewhere.

“When we got home, I asked my son to offload the things we bought, that I needed to go to the hospital because I was having signs of COVID-19.

“I drove down to the hospital where I work. I work in Accident and Emergency and we are the front-liners. Everything comes through our doors.”

She reportedly said one of the tests conducted on her showed that her lungs were already filled with fluid and collapsing. Subsequently, she was placed on a ventilator and after that, she became unconscious until she awoke four days later.

She was quoted as saying she later tested negative to the disease after her blood samples became better and the fluid in her lungs had dried up.

“Being that I work in the hospital, they rushed me straight, took my samples, and did all my blood tests and x-rays. The COVID-19 test takes 48 hours before the result comes out. They [start] diagnosing it through the patient’s x-ray. When they do your chest x-ray, they can see from your lungs if there’s fluid in the lungs,” she said.

“They detected fluid in my lungs and saw that it had started collapsing already. The doctor immediately told me that he’s going to intubate me and place me on a ventilator to allow my lungs rest. I agreed and was injected. That was the last I knew of what happened until four days later.

“According to my colleagues, I was intubated and sent to ICU. I woke up four days later and was told the water in my lungs had already dried up and the blood test had become better. They did another swab and it was negative; that’s how I was discharged.”

On how she was infected, she replied that she might have contracted the disease while treating patients with COVID-19.