Earlier this year, Natalie Rushie, novelist Salman Rushdie’s 34-year-old daughter-in-law, tested positive for Coronavirus, on the very same day she received the invitation to book her first vaccine.
She spent 12 days totally alone in hospital, separated from her 7-month old daughter and husband – convinced she would die.
This is her story…
I was very paranoid about Coronavirus. I found out I was pregnant at the start of 2020, and we were overjoyed because it took us a long time to get there, so we went into isolation immediately. All of our work was cancelled because my husband Zaf works in events and PR, and I’m a jazz singer.
At the time, I was reading a lot of news and knew how serious things were. I washed all of the fruit that came in the door, I washed every parcel and package. I was very anxious. When people were bulk-buying all of their toilet paper, I was buying an oxygen monitor on Amazon. My GP prescribed anxiety medication when the case numbers started to rise. We were super careful, we didn’t even go to the supermarket. We didn’t see anyone. That was the first lockdown – we isolated, had our baby daughter Rose, and everything seemed to be OK.
Fast-forward seven months and we were doing two lateral flow tests a week, just to be sure – all negative – until on 14th May 2021, Zaf’s test came back positive. It was such a shock, but we think he caught it at the gym.
So, Zaf isolated in our spare bedroom, and Rose and I continued to test negative for a couple of days. We both had upset stomachs, but thought it was OK because we didn’t have a cough, fever or change in taste or smell. Back then, I didn’t know that the Delta variant symptoms included stomach pain, nausea and vomiting.
By the 17th, I was feeling exhausted. I told Zaf that I didn’t know if I could cope – I could barely take his food up and down the stairs. I had lost 4lbs, and I didn’t know what to do. Then, a day later, I tested positive too.
I booked a PCR test, just to be sure. At the testing area, the volunteer told me that where they were previously testing 24 people a day, now they were testing 35 an hour. That was just as the Delta variant began. The irony is that on the same day I tested positive, I also received my invitation for my first Covid jab.
We were referred by our GP to the Covid hub where a doctor, who only deals with Covid cases, checks in with you each day and decides if you need antibiotics or to be referred to hospital. By now, Zaf was now struggling with breathlessness, by the following afternoon, I could barely walk up the stairs. The next day I collapsed three times at home. I couldn’t physically move my body, and my whole existence was trying to breathe. That’s when Zaf phoned the ambulance.
At Charing Cross Hospital, the doctors couldn’t get blood out of me; they tried 15 times. I collapsed for the fourth time because I kept on vomiting, and I just remember having 12 doctors and nurses around me as I woke up. My temp was 39.2 degrees at this point.
I needed a calcium IV drip (Covid affects your calcium levels) but because my veins kept collapsing, the drip was going directly into my muscles. My arms started to swell massively. I was sobbing, terrified, and completely alone. I just kept saying: “Please help me”.
But because my oxygen stats were OK, the doctors sent me home. By this point I couldn’t walk so they wheeled me out of the hospital in a wheelchair. The next morning I felt slightly better, but then things took a turn for the worst.
I tested my oxygen levels I knew something wasn’t right. My heartbeat was slow, too. I was shaking, so cold but hot at the same time, and I was totally delirious. I just needed to get warm.
Zaf phoned the Covid hub and the doctor said the ambulance was going to be 20 minutes because I wasn’t having a cardiac arrest. I remember my husband saying: “She isn’t going to last 20 minutes”. I’ve been with Zaf for 11 years and never seen him stressed until then. The doctor said the ambulance it was on its way.
The paramedics arrived and told me I needed to go to hospital. I couldn’t walk down the stairs without someone holding me. I was just vomiting everywhere. I felt like I was dying.
In A&E, the vomiting hadn’t stopped, and there was a terrible pain in my back. That’s when they found out I had sepsis. I didn’t just feel like I was dying; I was actually dying. I knew then I wasn’t leaving hospital anytime soon.
I would say there were seven days when I was just not there. The only thing I could muster the energy for was to text my sisters saying ‘please pray for me’. That was it. I was on oxygen via nasal canula, nebulisers and 25 pills of medication, anti-sickness and anti-diahorrea tablets every day. But I was constantly being sick and constantly going to the loo.
When people ask me what it’s like to have Covid, I say you don’t feel like you’re there. It’s like an alternate universe. The low oxygen means you barely remember anything; it’s almost like your body shuts down. You feel as if you closed your eyes, that would be it, you would just go.
The scariest thing about Covid is if you ask a doctor, “Am I going to die?”, they say, “I don’t know” – because they don’t.
But I knew I had to keep fighting. I had to keep fighting for my baby girl. I text Zaf saying: “As soon as I get home, I am going to lie on the grass and just look at the sky.” The thought of that – and them – is what kept me going.
On 29th May I was moved to a different ward. The nurses could see I was young, and I had a young daughter, and they said Zaf and Rose could stand by the door at the window and wave to me.
I knew it was supposed to be wonderful, but it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, seeing Rose through the glass. Because it had taken me everything; two nurses to help me sit in the chair so I could see her from only metres away. And it was almost too hard and too overwhelming not to be able to hold my daughter.
Things started looking up after a week in hospital when I was put on anti-viral medication remdesivir. Slowly, doctors started to wean me off oxygen, and finally, I managed a full 24 hours without any oxygen via nasal canula. After 12 days of fighting for my life, I was discharged. As soon as I was wheeled off the ward, Zaf greeted me with Rose. As soon as I was able to hold her, I couldn’t stop crying. It was just so overwhelming. In the lift going home, Rose started crying too, as if we had both knew how lucky we were.
I’m still recovering from Covid. The NHS has been amazing and I’ve had so much help, but I’m still struggling and haven’t been able to do any work. Covid has affected one of my lungs very badly, meaning my lung capacity for singing is much lower. My heart rate is really high now, so I need to make sure I don’t go out and run 10km because I would be in danger of having a cardiac arrest. My gastrointestinal system is still a bit messed up, and liver has just recovered after seven weeks. The drugs that saved my life have left me immunocompromised. My mental health has suffered too, and I have a lot of anxiety around experiencing any of the symptoms I had in hospital, such as collapsing or vomiting. I have hospital flashbacks too, so going to sleep is really difficult.
I also don’t want to miss this magical time with Rose; she’s nine months old now. I’ve had to change how I play with her, and I can really only manage if we’re on the floor. When she naps, I nap, and Zaf does all the night feeds. There’s been lots of adjustments.
But I feel grateful for life now. I feel lucky and I also feel very unlucky. I feel very scared, but so appreciative of really small, tiny things. I said to Zaf: “I just want to be with my daughter and my dog and you; I’m not bothered about anything else”. I just want to spend time with my family. Everything else is irrelevant.
I later found out that I was one of the first people to be sent to Charing Cross with the Delta variant, and I had been one of the sickest people in my age group at my GP. At the time, they didn’t know much about the Delta variant, but if I was admitted now I would have been treated differently because it’s making young people a lot sicker. They’re presenting with the symptoms I had – terrible diarrhoea and vomiting which makes you dehydrated with low electrolytes – but a lot of people don’t know much about the new variant and its symptoms.
That’s why I chose to share my story on Instagram. I posted about my symptoms, my experience, and urging people to get the vaccine. I had messages from people all over the world in Canada, America, South America, Australia; people that I’d never even heard of were messaging me saying they’d booked their vaccine because of me.
Because it’s so important to put your trust in science. I urge people to do your research and don’t believe everything you read on social media. It’s OK to be scared of a new vaccine. But I promise: it’s worth it to be alive; to be able to hold your baby daughter. To be able to lie on the grass and look at the sky.