Covid19 has taken several family and friends away from Gemmi Butcher over the past 15 months. So when she contracted the virus earlier this month, she thought she was going to die.
At first she did not suspect she had covid19, because her sinuses had been giving her trouble because of the Sahara dust in the atmosphere. But on May 7 she woke up with diarrhoea, a fever, and severe pain in her nasal passage.
She spoke to her father, who advised her to get tested, so she went to a health centre.
“It was one of the most painful things I’ve ever felt in my life – this long probe going deep into your nostril. It’s really an intense, burning sensation. It burned like pepper sauce.
“The doctor there told me they were very overwhelmed, so they would only call me if I was positive. But I got instructions to quarantine for 14 days.”
That Sunday she got a call confirming she was positive. She called her manager to explain the situation and everyone in her department at work had to be quarantined and tested.
Butcher, 40, told Sunday Newsday when she got the news she was so afraid that she cried. She had been watching the news, had heard the “horror stories,” and knew someone younger than her who died recently.
After almost a week of fever, on May 13, her temperature spiked and she was short of breath. An ambulance was called and the emergency medical technicians stayed in her yard, monitoring her vital signs and liaising with a hospital for about an hour.
“Eventually they got the okay to carry me to Caura Hospital. While heading up, all sorts of thoughts were coming to my mind. Am I going to die? What’s going to happen to me? What’s going to happen to my family?
"I was scared for my life. All I could have done was to give it over to God. I cried, and I cried out to Jesus, ‘This is out of my control. Please fight for me. Please fight to keep me alive. Because I was really frightened. I felt like I was dying.”
When Butcher arrived that night she was put in a bed. The nurses took her vital signs, asked her questions, and gave her something to eat. She said she was not given oxygen, but was encouraged her to breathe on her own as much as possible.
During her three-day stay she was given a barrage of tablets including antibiotics and painkillers. Butcher recalled lying in bed, surrounded by people moaning and crying out in pain, Her oxygen levels dropped several times.
She said the doctors wanted to discharge her and send her to a step-down facility the day after she arrived, but there was no transport, so she remained there until May 17 when a family member picked her up.
Just before Butcher left, a woman on her ward died. She could only bury her face in a pillow while another patient went to the bathroom to hide, because they did not want to see when the funeral home staff came for the body. It reminded them how easily it could have been them being taken away.
Butcher had nothing but praise and gratitude for the doctors, nurs
