A secondary school teacher diagnosed with diabetes among other debilitating medical conditions has narrated how she contracted and eventually conquered the novel coronavirus.
Sarah Hall turned 26 while battling the illness last week. She narrated her fears after contracting it in a harrowing account. Hall explained her experience of being a young adult with underlying health conditions who were infected with the killer novel coronavirus to the Telegraph newspaper.
Aside from being a Type 1 diabetic, Hall suffers from a condition called A1AT that impacts her lungs and liver.
The 26-year-old woman tested positive for coronavirus after bouts of shortness of breath and fatigue.
She initially chalked her symptoms down to the stresses of teaching, then began to notice that she was more susceptible to the common cold more often. She then refused to go to A&E to avoid putting strain on the NHS.
"Through all this I have to somehow continue working, sending work in for the kids I teach, planning lessons," she said.
The novel coronavirus pandemic was first detected in the city of Wuhan, Hubei Province in central China in December 2019. 700,000 confirmed cases were tallied globally, with the fatalities hitting over 33,000.
Hall felt freezing and then developed a cough so she was advised by work to undergo quarantine for 14 days.
By Wednesday, NHS 111 strongly surmised that she had the coronavirus because after calling the NHS 111 line, she and the person on the other end of the phone suspected she had the virus.
Hall felt lightheaded, as though she was about to faint every now and then.
She battled against COVID-19 and won despite even with her pre-existing conditions.
To remain calm, she drank lots of fluids and kept her mind off the coronavirus.
If you are unwell, she advises against working from home as it took her approximately 10 hours to complete one lesson and the work that accompanied it.
"At 7 PM on Saturday night, I ring NHS 111 again. I'm in a really bad way. We wait nine hours for an ambulance to arrive and face-to-face assess me," she said.
On Friday, Hall thought she was on a path to recovery. Her fever had subsided and her breathing became easier.
But then was sweating by the afternoon. Flopping on the couch, she began vomiting, coughing and struggling to breathe, and losing consciousness.
Hall was dubious if she should be admitted to the hospital because it might waste resources or she could be an infection risk to someone else.
She had just bought a car two months before contracting the disease and had put her boyfriend on the insurance. At 5 AM, both packed and went to the Royal Free Hospital.
She was diagnosed with the coronavirus.
Hall was seriously dehydrated so she was ordered fluids and then sent back home.
By day seven of the virus, the symptoms started to diminish. "My birthday was ruined though -- I couldn't blow out candles!"
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