As he slowly opened his eyes, Sohail Anjum sensed something was deeply wrong.
He was still lying in a hospital bed. All he vaguely remembered was being told by the doctor that he was going to be put into a coma.
But when was that? How long had he been asleep? He had no idea.
“I had a high temperature, fever, I was coughing and short of breath. When I went to the A&E registration desk, they took all my details and took my oxygen levels and took me in straight away,” he says.
“They put me in a room and then a few hours later they shifted me onto a ward. Then put me on an oxygen mask to feed oxygen into my body. The next evening I had a visit from the ITU surgeon who came up with a whole team and said we need to put you into induced sleep.
“At the time I didn’t know that induced sleep meant a coma and I was so ill I was like, ‘Fine, do what you have to do.’ I was putting my faith in them.”
Sohail was so sick with COVID-19 that he needed to be intubated soon after he was admitted to Croydon University Hospital.
“They had put me on a ventilator, but I don’t know how many days I was on the ventilator for. I don’t know if it was from the beginning or halfway through.”
While he was asleep the doctors gave him a tracheostomy. “Basically they make a small hole and they insert a tube into your lungs to ensure your body is getting the oxygen required.”
The odds of survival after being intubated are not high.
“I woke up and they told me it was touch and go because during my coma my temperature wasn’t coming down and they were pumping me with medication, antibiotics and stuff, so they said, ‘Look it could have gone either way.’ It was 50-50 whether or not I survived.”
Sohail’s first thoughts when he came round were of his mother. He does not know why but says he just had a “feeling”.
He asked the doctors and nurses but nobody would answer his questions. It was not until a consultant, who was also a family friend, broke some devastating news to Sohail.
“It was about my mother who was admitted into the same hospital just a few days after I had been intubated. She went into hospital I think on a Monday and passed away two days later.”
Rashida Begum Mohammad was in the same hospital dying of COVID-19 just a few wards away from her son. Sohail, of course, did not know because he was comatose. But still, he says, he knew something had happened to her.
“It wasn’t actually broken to me, I just had this feeling. It just came into my thoughts and stuff. I don’t know if I overheard someone talking during my coma. Because when you’re in a coma they say your conscience is still alive and you tend to hallucinate.
“When I woke up the first thing I was asking for was my mobile phone so I could phone up my brother and confirm the news.
“One of the nurses who knew my brother phoned him and said, ‘Your brother is awake and he’s been asking about your mother.’ I think at the time my brother was a bit shocked, like, ‘How did he find out, who told him?’
“The doctors and nurses knew, but no one wanted to tell me because of the trauma I had been through. I mean when I woke up, I was in CCU at the time, and then one of my brother’s friends who is a consultant came down and he kind of confirmed and gently broke the news.”
Sohail was reeling in shock at the news of his mother’s death. But there was another bombshell to come.
He was told he had been in a coma for nearly one month.
Sohail’s brother Aqeel had been given special permission to visit their mother just before she died. He told Sohail that she had prayed for his recovery until her last breath.
“My mum was in a very poorly condition, my brother was allowed a special visitation under exceptional circumstances otherwise no visitation was allowed. He visited her in the evening and one of the last things she prayed for was for my health to get better.
“I was told that while I was in a coma, it was only when she passed away, it was only then that my vitals started improving, so that’s when the doctors realised there was some hope for me. It was definitely my mother’s prayers that saved me.”
Sohail is 47 but looks much older. His body is frail and he walks unsteadily with the aid of crutches. The doctors have told him it will take at least six months again to rebuild his strength. And that will be with the help of regular physiotherapy.
“Because I was in a coma for a whole month, my body was decommissioned. Basically, I had no muscle movement whatsoever. I felt a bit disorientated. After CCU when they moved me into the general ward, for the first week or two I was totally immobile I couldn’t move or talk so the nurses had to bathe me.
“I couldn’t lift up a spoon so they had to feed me breakfast, lunch and dinner. At that time I had lost my taste as well so the only thing I was eating at the time was yoghurt. Before I went in I was 67kg. In hospital when they last weighed me I had come down to 59kg, so I had lost a drastic amount of weight.”
Sohail saw patients dying around him. He knows he would not have survived had it not been for the speed and skill of the care he received in hospital.
“I really have to commend the surgeons and the nurses who are on the front line, who risked their lives in order to ensure that the patients are well looked after and for their health and benefit.
“When I was in the general ward, the nurses there really, really looked after you. If I hadn’t gone to A&E when I did and if the doctors hadn’t put me into an induced coma at the time, it may have been a different story for me.
“I may not have been sitting here today having this conversation, so I really have to thank them for all the hard work and effort they put into saving my life.”