Bogside COVID survivor Gary recalls gruelling survival fight with the lethal virus

Gary was seriously ill after contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus and ended up in intensive care at Altnagelvin.

This week he spoke of how the illness crept up on him as what seemed like an ordinary ‘flu before deteriorating into a life-threatening infection.

“I thought I had the ‘flu: headaches, fever, but nothing else. Everyone was saying there were a lot of other symptoms but all I was taking were headaches and fevers and saying, as you do,” he recalled.

Gary spent a week in bed neither eating nor sleeping. He wasn’t getting any better so he phoned the health service, was triaged at the Altnagelvin COVID-19 centre, and admitted.

He didn’t guess how serious his condition was.

“I was fairly alert or thinking you are alert. When I was sleeping in the house at that time my mind was a wee bit here and a wee bit there, thinking things and waking up and hallucinating,” he said.

After being admitted he was eventually transferred for more intensive treatment when things got serious.

“Altnagelvin phoned my house and said this thing can go either way. Expect a phone call in the middle of the night,” he recalled.

The medics worked tirelessly with their patient as Gary’s family feared the worst.

“They started to come in that night pumping me. Every hour they were in waking you up, doing your bloods, doing your oxygen, doing whatever they had to do for the whole night every hour. By the time we came around to the next day my body must have responded to it,” he said.

Gary, a young man yet, is still recovering.

“Trying to get up and walk about it was like you had no muscle. The stone-and-a-half attacked your muscle. all your muscle went...I had to walk for a good two or three weeks before I could do anything.”