During this second wave of the coronavirus disease in Uganda where there is widespread community infections, many patients and those who recover can not precisely tell where they got the infection from.
For Mr. Dick Nvule Nsubuga, 42, an Editor with Simba FM in Kampala, his wife was the rock and saving grace at a time when his contacts and social networks could not get him to a health facility to seek medication. He needed oxygen and his wife, a mother to seven months old twins, had to act fast to save him. Mr. Nvule shared his recovery journey with Daily Monitor's Irene Abalo Otto.
When I got sick and was admitted, some online journalists pronounced me dead. I saw and heard this and I felt bad.
Mr Dick Nvule at the Hight Dependence Unit at Mulago Hospital. He has recovered and recently resumed work.
I agree that people are dying. They were saying they spoke to my close family members. I wondered who they spoke to yet they did not call my wife who knew what was happening to me?
For me, the sickness started like malaria and I felt a little feverish, one night. Around the fourth of June, I decided to go to the hospital to check for malaria. They tested me and they said I had a bacterial infection in the chest and some parasites of malaria. They gave me anti-malaria and drugs to take care of bacterial infection.
After five days of that medication, I was not feeling any improvement. I had signs of Covid. I was feeling back pain, joint pain, a slight dry cough and it would intensify especially at night.
In the morning it got worse. I could not easily breathe. I picked up my phone and tried to call my friend, the spokesperson of Uganda Red Cross. I wanted her to send me an ambulance because I had no energy to drive the car. When I called her, she was switching me off. She was asking me to send a message.
I took herbs, drunk a lot of neem, and ginger. After a week, there was no improvement. Then one night, I could not breathe. I called my cousin who is a doctor at Mulago Hospital at about 3am. He said we need to do a covid test. i could not get to the hospital at that time.
I later realized that she could not pick my calls because she had also tested positive. She was in the hospital in Jinja. Also on an oxygen bed.
Then I called Emmanuel the spokesperson of the Ministry of health. He picked. I asked him to send me an ambulance because I was not feeling well. He said he was going to send the number of an ambulance driver.
I waited for about thirty minutes but there was no ambulance. Then I picked my car keys and told my madam (wife) “you are going to drive.” Madam said, “l don’t have a permit. I don’t know how I will do it. I have taken a long time without driving.”
I said no you have nothing to do now because the ambulance does not seem to be there. She agreed and drove me to Mulago. We took one hour to reach.
That hour felt like forever because I didn’t want us to make any more delays. I did not want to scare her because I remember one time when we reached a jam, I told her that I could not breathe. I saw her panic because she thought that I could pass out in the vehicle.
When I reached Mulago, I contacted my cousin again. And good enough he was within. He came and they tested me. I tested positive for Covid. I was a bit scared when they led me to the HDU (High Dependence Unit). It had very many people. For good management and SOPs, the reception should only receive around five people. But there were around thirty people. I waited at the reception for around thirty minutes.
As I waited in the queue a nurse came and they measured my oxygen level. It was low. I was to be admitted in ward number eighty two. First, I had to be put on oxygen so I sat on the veranda because there were no available beds.
They put my oxygen there, next to me. I waited for up to four hours before I got a bed at around 4:00pm. I was taken to the ward.
At the waiting lobby, i could see people being brought in very critical conditions. I remember at one time, they brought a policeman. he wore a police face mask and I assumed he was a policeman.
He was in a very bad state. They asked me to take off my oxygen and they helped him because he was near dead. I waited for another cylinder to be brought in.
But i also observed that there were some cylinders at a corner but one medical worker said they were not working. “Let’s try,” a guy came in and started fixing them on each and everyone who did not have oxygen. I think he was also a medical person. I realized that there were not technical people to handle some of those cylinders.
There were female doctors and nurses at the reception but these cylinders appeared to be a little bit technical to operate. Someone needed just a wheel spanner, the magalo to turn around things and that alone made the cylinders work.
Imagine that all of us who were there needed that oxygen but until this guy came with an ambulance, no one could fix those oxygen cylinders on patients. They thought they were not functioning. By the time i left that area, the guy had about eight more cylinders to fix on patients.
Then they asked me if I was able to carry my things. I had some energy to carry my bags. Then the person led me through to the lift to level two.
They admitted me to the High Dependency Units. I spent six days there. I was on oxygen support for Four days. Two days, I breathed on my own.
But for the four days I spent there on oxygen support I saw a lot of things going on. People dying to the extent that when they took me off oxygen i wanted to go home. But they put me in a separate room to monitor me.
On Friday evening, I recall a doctor telling me that I had to stay over the weekend and “we monitor you and probably we shall release you on Monday.” But another doctor had said i could leave on Saturday. This other one came saying; “yes, you never know you can get terrible when you get back home. That is why I am suggesting you go on Monday, after some days. You have to be monitored.”
But mid Saturday afternoon, I made a decision that I should push for my discharge because I realized that things were not good. People were dying in the ward. Whenever you could go inside the ward trying to exercise, you find bodies on the corridors, on beds. I said maybe I would be the next person to die. So I pushed for my discharge with the doctor.
I told him; “you know what, it is no longer Monday like you suggested. I think let me go today because I am feeling much better.”
He said; “let me discuss with my colleagues, I cannot take a decision alone.”
So he went, that was around 3:00pm. They spoke, and then at 5:00pm the nurse came back and said; “you have been discharged. Get ready to get your things fumigated and you also fumigated.”
At around 5:30pm, I moved out of the place (Covid Treatment Unit).
I was discharged on the 12th of June after admission on the 6th of June.
A lot of things happened for the six days i stayed there.
First of all, we created friends.The biggest lesson for me has been that covid is real. When i was at Mulago, i realise that we need to help each other to survive. Especially when people are sick, they need help because next time you will need help too.
I found someone called John Owena. He heads the Makerere University mature Entry department, something like that. He was a very good man. He had been there for two weeks and he was my neighbor. He said we should all be friends in the wards because at one time you might need them and they might need you.
We would talk politics, health, we discuss things that people were sending on social media because we also had phones with us.
We would also discuss our health. Owena told us that he was admitted with acute Covid. He had too much cough and flu and he told us that, the trick has been eating well, eating warm food and drinking hot water .So he gave us skills on how to survive and especially at night, you have to take a lot warm water because in the night is when acute covid attacks most people.
During the day you feel some flu but you don’t show too much but at night that is when you will feel too much malaria on you, stomach ache, headache, you feel the pain more at night. We had an area where we would put some water. We actually had some kettle. He (Owena) would put water and ask guys “wake up, it is time to drink some warm water.”
He also taught us on how to help patients whose oxygen water has run down. He would say that, because the nurses sometimes were too few on the ground at night we needed to help each other to survive.
You would go and help those with low water levels in the tin when they oxygen becomes dry.
At least me, although I was on oxygen, I could afford to take it off for a few minutes and run to the toilet and back. But there are those that could not do that. They have to be on it twenty four seven. Because for them their oxygen level in the body was really low.
I started on seven litres of oxygen and there was a time I was on one and a half litres then they removed me from oxygen. Others were still in bad conditions. They had nine litters of oxygen, eight and that was really bad.
We helped them in the night to go on filling water in the tin to keep the oxygen flowing well. We kind of became a family there in there.
I recall a one Fadiga from Cameroon. He was telling me he was heading a consulate in Uganda. We became friends. Although he spoke French and very little English, whenever he needed something I would help him. Unfortunately he didn’t make it. He eventually died.
Sometimes you get tired of being in the ward seeing other people going through pain. So you excuse yourself to the latrine and peep in the window to see people at the reception. Whenever you peep, you see very many patients being brought in. Sometimes it would worry you but also you would be lucky that you got a bed in there while others did not.
I was scared the time they put me on oxygen. I thought I must be very sick to have reached the level of oxygen support. I was also praying to God to help me come through it well, and glad I made it.
Apart from oxygen therapy, i was given dexa, IV injections and some Vitamin C.
I think what has really helped me even after discharge has been soup. I have eaten all sorts of soup. From mushroom, to bean soup, to meat soup, to mukene soup. Every morning, I start with soup before breakfast.
The other thing that I think has also helped me is doing exercises. Because I wake up in the morning, walk around for fifty meters and go back, fifty meters and back again. At one time, I would also throw some balls on the walls as they returned to me. Such games!
When i was discharged, a friend came to my home. I told him to keep a distance because i have covid. He ran away. (chuckles). At work, i felt a little bit of discomfort. Some people look at you with sympathetic eyes. I understand what this means to them but i always say, covid is real and people should observe the SOPs.
Solution Journalism - Uganda 