‘It is a miracle, that is the only explanation’

Carla Bowe also thanked the “amazing” medical team who cared for her husband Blian and the people of Derry and beyond for their constant prayers and good wishes.

Blian Bowe (34) from the Bogside spent around two months in an induced coma after becoming critically ill with the virus, and was reliant on a ventilator to breathe for much of that time as medics at Altnagelvin Hospital battled to save his life.

On several occasions his wife Carla and their wider family were told to prepare for the worst and there were many terrifying moments along the way where Blian’s life hung in the balance.

Then, out of the blue, the Derry man turned a corner and after weeks of recuperation and physiotherapy, he was allowed home last Friday, where relatives and friends gathered to welcome him with cheers and applause.

His wife Carla had prayed daily to Derry’s own Sister Clare to have Blian home and thanked all those across the city and beyond for their prayers and acts and words of kindness and the “amazing” team at the Intensive Care Unit at Altnagelvin for never giving up on Blian.

Carla told the ‘Journal’ that senior mortgage consultant team leader Blian had first shown signs of being ill in late March.

“He went to work on Monday, March 23, and he came home that day and he was feeling a wee bit unwell, cold and shivery, and he had a wee slight cough. I said to him, ‘Go you and isolate in another room’, which he did. The next day he was getting worse, high temperatures but his breathing was still good. We weren’t concerned about that.

“I phoned the 111 number the next day to get a wee bit of advice and their advice was to self-isolate for seven days, and the family for 14 days, so that was fine. The next day I was getting a wee bit more concerned about Blian, because he was spiking really high temperatures and we couldn’t get it under control. We phoned his own GP and got the same advice.”

The following day Blian wasn’t eating and was barely drinking any liquids, and seeking advice again they were told Blian most likely had a bowel infection but Carla said she knew in her heart it was COVID. The following day they phoned the GP surgery and were advised it sounded like COVID and he was prescribed an antibiotic.

By the Saturday, Carla said something was telling her to just go ahead and ring an ambulance. “I just felt so helpless. I knew he needed medical attention. His breathing was fine but he looked really, really unwell and he had the symptoms. I didn’t know where else to turn. The ambulance came and took him in into Resus and he was on very minimal oxygen at the start. Then a good few hours later the nurse rang me to say they were taken him to Intensive Care Unit and they were going to put him in an induced coma. He just took a turn for the worse, so they done that in the early hours of the Sunday morning and he was 100 per cent on the ventilator. It was awful.”

“Blian was on the ventilator and there was no progress the next few days. Doctors then did a thing called ‘proning’ with him, put him face down to open the airways and when they did that he was making very slight progress. He was on his front for 16 hours a day, and they were taking specialist advice from England.”

There was then some talk of an ECMO (ecextracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machine because, Carla said, “there was not really much else they could do”. A specialist team would have come from Britain to accompanny him to England but medics concluded that Blian was so sick he would not survive the journey. There are no such machines in Northern Ireland.

Carla did her own research and discovered that there was one such machine in the Mater Hospital, Dublin that was not in use. The doctors were in talks but for various reasons it was decided against.

“From there things got worse,” Carla recalls. “They had to stop the proning, because every time they touched him he got worse, he wasn’t sustaining his oxygen levels so they had to just let him lie and see how things go. They couldn’t even touch his arm to move it because he was desaturating when they tried. He was on full pelt on the ventilator, there was no more oxygen to give.”

While Blian remained in the coma, Carla and the couple’s three young sons Ben (14) Reece (12) and Oisin (6) were able to talk to him and play a bit of music for him via FaceTime, facilitated by the medical team at Altnagelvin.

Meanwhile, messages of support and pledges of prayers began flooding in, and Carla, who couldn’t have family and friends around to comfort and help her in person for several weeks because in the interim she too had tested positive for Covid-19, said that that support was a Godsend. “There were a lot of prayers, and this is why I believe Blian is here today, it’s down to all the prayers, and obviously the amazing team in ICU all the doctors and nurses too. They never gave up on him. They just kept going and kept going. The whole of Derry was praying so hard for him.

“Three days after Blian went into hospital I was given the Our Lady statue and the Sister Clare picture and Novena by Sr. Clare’s two sisters, Shauna and Megan, and to be honest from that came into our home that’s where I found my strength. It only left there yesterday [Friday last], but we were praying for this all along, that Blian would get home and he got home. Sister Clare served her purpose in my home.

“We were in lockdown so I was on my own for four weeks, but then my sister Jacqueline then was absolutely amazing. She came and lived with me. That was a Godsend as well, and we had the family praying and supporting us throughout.”

Back across the river at the hospital however the situation was becoming more critical as Blain’s condition worsened, and Carla at one point was sent for. “They let me go in to see him with the full PPE equipment under special circumstances because they thought Blian wasn’t going to make it through the night, so it was just in to say goodbye to him. I got into see him, but in my heart I wasn’t giving up hope. All the bad news, the worst scenarios you were getting, you just had to build yourself back up. As long as Blian’s heart was still beating, there was hope there.”

Blian survived the night but then for a few weeks there was no change. “Then we got the call to say Blian’s organs were now failing, the rate his heart was going, they had to put him on dialysis,” Carla recalled. “On a Friday then we got the call from the doctors to say things aren’t good, we need you to come over to the hospital to discuss what Blian’s wishes would be.”

Carla and Blian’s family were told then that given the way his condition had rapidly deteriorated, if that continued the next 12 hours were critical.

But the 12 hours past, and clinging to hope, the families waited hour by hour, day by day, and then, all of a sudden, there was a tiny improvement. “The doctor were phoning giving me an update of everything every single day, so it was like that wee bit of hope. That was about four weeks ago.”

Later, although not out of the woods, it was determined Blian would undergo a tracheotomy, and as he was weaned off the ventilator, the family were able to FaceTime him and he would respond by blinking his eyes, and later nod his head, yes and no. There was another setback when it was discovered he had sepsis, but Blian fought off this infection with antibiotics, despite his weakened state. And then over the course of the past few weeks, Blian’s daily progress shocked everyone. “He had to get physiotherapy and learnt to walk again because of muscle wastage,” Carla said. “Only two weeks ago he couldn’t sit up on the edge of the bed. Then there was massive changes each day in his rehabilitation because he was so determined and so positive. That’s the kind of him, he will let nothing beat him.”

Soon after Blain was out of Intensive Care and required no oxygen and then the big day came a week ago on Friday past when was be allowed home.

Blian has no underlaying health conditions and why COVID-19 affected him so badly remains a mystery. “It’s just so strange. I don’t know if we will ever find an answer. He was one of the sickest patients they had ever seen. The doctors were amazed at his recovery. It was a miracle. It’s unbelievable how is even here today. Everything feels like a dream, it doesn’t feel real. The boys are just daddy’s boys and he does everything for them and they couldn’t wait to get him home. He is doing fantastic. The only thing is his right arm is not working, because of the proning the nerves can get stretched, but they are very hopeful this will one day come back. Blian will have a long way to go in his rehabilitation but we are here now and he is making progress.”

Blian remembers little about his ordeal. “The only thing Blian remembers is leaving the house, going into Resus and wakening up from the coma.”

Carla said that throughout these past few months, the team at Altnagelvin, the prayers and support from people and from local priest Fr Paul Farren, and the stories of other survivors have helped them through. “We never gave up hope, even through the darkest of days and the worst news somebody can be told. If we didn’t have hope then I think we all would have crumbled, or I would have anyway. Blian’s journey affected so many people, people all around the world were praying for Blian.

“When I was going through these difficult times reading other people’s stories gave me hope. You want people to hear positive stories.

“Although there was a lot of dark, dark times we’re here now and it’s absolutely amazing. There is hope.”