It’s possible, even from such a short stay on the ward, that I became thoroughly institutionalised. Lights up around 7am; breakfast, lunch, dinner at fixed but unannounced times – I was secretly pleased to have cracked the code when I read the inpatient information leaflet online on the UHB website, about a week after getting back home; cups of tea in between; refills of water twice a day; the cleaning run; lights down but never quite out.

Getting home felt so liberating that my own ingrained need for a rhythm and routine each day caught me quite by surprise. A big and impinging thing for me was needing that same low-level, sodium orange light on at night. Fighting insomnia, below which lay a visceral fear of going to sleep because of the vivid nightmares I had experienced every night in hospital (and 2-3 days before that I now realise), I couldn’t face the dislocation & psychological isolation of total darkness even though my body craved the rest of deep sleep. I even invested in a fancy app-controlled light bulb which has been a boon in enabling me to gradually retrain myself into welcoming the darkness and stitching it back to sleep in my primal senses. I haven’t had nightmares since I came home thankfully but still feared that I would, every night for the first fortnight or so until I got past the storm of symptoms which accompanied the sudden cessation of steroid treatment and the last attack from the virus itself, targeting my digestive system as an existing weak point in my health.

Returning to unbroken sleep has been such a help and I can’t claim any insight or kudos in making it happen, I’m just grateful for the respite which I know continues to elude so many others who are recovering. If anything it’s the patience and kindness and love of my family, putting up with Weird Recovery Dad / Keith for these weeks, that’s created a bubble of safety which my body just seems to have absorbed by osmosis somehow. Such a lot of this thing seems to be driven by enteric systems and instincts I can barely understand, let alone influence or control.

Our cats are much more sorted out than we are in just knowing the rhythms of the day and what we, their pet humans, should be doing. For about the first fortnight, our two big brother cats took it in turns to come and sit next to me on the bed in the evening and to put their paws on my side & chest once I’d laid down, fixing me with a glare, gently but firmly instructing me to just sleep, following some instinct or other. As I drifted off I’d feel the subtle weight of them laying their head on their front paws and the added impetus of not wanting to disturb them was usually my last waking thought.

[yeah yeah, I know, cats & beds. They may be able to catch the virus, I know – you try telling them that. – Ed.]

The ravages of my short term memory do seem to be slowly and imperceptibly healing but I still have to live by lists. Mock all you want (well, actually don’t- nobody is making you read this!) but my day is planned out on my phone calendar, anything involving sequences of tasks is written down in a notebook, I’m even using Trello to plan stuff I need or want to do each day as it feels very helpful to see a documented list of Done stuff. It’s a very strange combination to have enthusiasm and the urge to accomplish whilst also being knackered and confused and aching, so these strategies also help me curb it a bit and plan in proper rest and downtime.

And yes, I’m still subconsciously stuck on hospital mealtimes and cup of tea breaks. It’s really not a bad way to be.

I’ve been home from hospital since 29th December, which was a day of very high emotions for me, as both myself and then my hospital buddy learnt from the consultants on the ward rounds that we had indeed achieved 24 hours of stable pulse ox levels with no oxygen and were going to be discharged to our respective homes. There was the frustration of waiting for take-out meds to be dispensed and discharge letters to be typed up; the sudden and slightly deflating confirmation I could go, in what then seemed almost indecent haste, with hurried farewells; the sudden shock of walking on my own flimsy legs back through an Acute MU ward, something I had only done in my med-driven nightmares, and then to a set of lifts, and down five floors onto what seemed like an almost absurdly long corridor. I actually did mutter under my breath: ‘you have GOT to be kidding me!’ and the lovely nursing assistant – let’s call her Roxy – said ‘ooh do you need to stop, do you need me to get a wheelchair?’ – and I remembered that my wife was at the end of that seemingly endless expanse and said: No, no thank you Roxy, I can do this. I walked close to the handrail, not touching it but my hand floating as if playing my own strength on a theramin. I felt hollow and my legs seemed to have dissolved but I could still perceive the floor’s solidity and knew I was not going to fold up and fall. So I plodded slowly onwards. My time perception was still highly elastic and the walk felt like a few seconds and many minutes all at the same time. My legs did not hurt or ache at all, as I thought they might. Finally we approached the open expanse of the hospital’s main reception. I could see my wife but she was looking in many directions other than mine. I had not seen her moving, lively face for a week and the last time, I was struggling to breathe. She looked like the only, best thing in my universe and I wanted to enfold her in my pipe cleaner arms and say: Honestly, this *is* me trying to hug you.

There were shenanigans in fetching the car and what felt like a long wait for her to pull into the bay. I was outside wearing a fleece and feeling a bit ‘nesh’, when two inpatients in pyjamas and dressing gowns came out to stand nearby for a fag. They’d overheard our conversation about a belated Christmas lunch and perhaps a beer, (I know, I know, daft idea – but yes, I did) and I braced myself for some piss-taking, but no: ‘alright mate! you getting out of ‘ere then, goin’ to ‘ave yer Christmas dinner yeah? an’ a beer? Good on ya mate!’ I thought I should say something so I simply said: yeah, it’s going to be great to see my family, I’ve just got out from the COVID ward you see.

“FAAAAAAARRKK really mate? Bloody ‘ell well done mate well done good on ya –“

Soon I was in the warm car and the journey back, so familiar, so surreal was actually really good at grounding me back into external reality, so that when we reached home it felt normal and natural and just so very good indeed. The cats were there to greet me with chirps and head-to-knee rubs. I went through the door to what felt like Paradise and there were presents and hugs and tears and love and it was All Very Good Indeed.

I was still very, very sick. I managed to remember enough about the isolation to make sure I didn’t put in danger the family members as yet untouched by the disease.

Since then there has been a very long, very slow recovery not only from the virus itself, but also massively going through withdrawal from medication and a weird mixture of the subsiding side effects as I detoxed, with a whole bunch of new and exceptionally awful symptoms of the actual withdrawal. I would say that period of over a week has been one of the real lows because it happened after the euphoria of returning home. Nonetheless, I am now substantially recovered from most of it: but by whatever gods you use, I still ache with tiredness, I am still fighting with insomnia, the struggle to stay hydrated remains a daily reality, I cannot remember such muscle weakness and chronic fatigue despite a range of minor illnesses earlier in life. The fear of a DVT and the invasiveness of the elevation of feet and balancing that with moving and walking and trying to do normal things around all of that too, that element is now surprisingly high up in my thoughts because it is very disruptive to life in general.

I’m very far from being able to say: I am Well. Yet, each day feels like a new start on a higher step of the ladder.