Shrewsbury Covid survivor: 'I beat death but my fight goes on'
As the country was still reeling from being placed under lockdown restrictions, Karen Peake was fighting for her life in intensive care – one of the first to truly understand the life-changing seriousness of Covid-19.
Today marks a year since Shropshire experienced its first death from coronavirus.
The early days of the virus were frightening because less was known about the illness. And its randomness was also difficult. For most the virus was not serious. For some it was life-threatening.
As the pandemic began to take hold across the UK, Karen, a 53-year-old mother from Shrewsbury, was among those whose life was almost destroyed.
She spent seven days in the intensive care unit at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, with doctors battling to save her body from the ravaging effects of coronavirus.
Karen was discharged on April 13, but nearly a year on she still bears the physical and mental scars of her ordeal.
The months since returning home have brought a mixture of relief, guilt, and frustration as the effects of long Covid combine with life-changing results.
Karen became ill at the end of March last year, just as the rest of the country was coming to terms with the reality of the first ever lockdown.
She said: "I was sitting on the sofa with my daughter and husband on the other sofa and I said 'there's something seriously wrong'.
"I was talking to the GP on the telephone and I was not with it, I could not hear people, I wasn't with it."
Ambulance
After a visit to the GP where her oxygen levels were "dangerously low" Karen was taken to RSH by ambulance.
While she remembers the journey, and getting into A&E, it is at that point the recollection becomes murky, a blur of doctors waving at the window and hours of lying on her front wearing an oxygen mask to help her breathe.
She said: "I cannot remember much about it apart from waking up with the mask on and the drips inside me."
After seven days of "touch and go" treatment Karen was one of the first patients to leave the intensive care unit, being clapped out by staff as she moved onto the ward.
She returned home after another six days on the ward, but as the months have gone on, the long-term effects of the virus have hit home.
"It changes your life," she said. "I can't see an end to it now.
"I still have trouble climbing the stairs, and I get out of breath. I can walk on the flat for about six or seven minutes.
"It started to get better during the summer but then during September it went backwards and it hasn't got any better."
She added: "Having to stop on the stairs at 53? It does not seem real. It seems as though it is not happening to me.
"I bought myself a treadmill to try and build myself up but I can't even do 10 minutes without having to stop. That's depressing because I can't walk anywhere and I can't see people either."
Karen said her family had looked after her every step of the way, describing her daughter as "her world".
She said: "When I first came out they did everything for me. You start to get the feeling I should be doing it myself but it is a year on and I cannot wash my own hair."
Karen also revealed how the mental impacts of her experience constantly play on her mind.
She said: "I have nightmares where I still think I have got my mask on my face and my husband says he can hear me gasping for breath.
"Little things will set me off. TV programmes. I won't watch the news or anything about Covid, I can feel myself suffering with anxiety if I do.
"It is quite restrictive with what I can do. I was waiting for a hip transplant before this but now that can't happen."
Future
She added: "The doctors are so nice but they keep saying they don't know. They don't know how long it will take to get better, or even if I will."
Karen said her relief at surviving is also mixed with guilt for those – particularly younger – who didn't survive.
She said: "I am so happy I survived but there is a lot that goes with surviving. It is not that you have Covid and then you get better.
"You see these people who do not believe it exists and you think 'why me' but then I also have a guilt thing – why did I survive when other people around me didn't?
"I can still see them being taken away."
She added: "In a way you are really happy you have survived but you see someone younger than you and you think why did I survive and they didn't? I am really overwhelmed and relieved but it is still in the back of your head that a lot of people didn't survive."
While she struggles to battle back to health Karen said there is immense frustration at seeing people denying the severity of Covid, or even that it exists.
She said: "The deniers it really upsets me when they put stuff about 'there shouldn't be a lockdown', 'it's not that bad', 'it is only a small percentage dying'.
"You see it online and you start typing an answer and you think 'what's the point, they will just have a go at you', so I don't go on it.
"If people knew what we have gone through they would be having the vaccine. It is not just the two weeks and you are better, a lot of us early ones are still suffering."
