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Dominic’s Fight With Covid-19

Fri, 18 Feb 2022 16:33:30 GMT

Dominic’s Fight With Covid-19

By Joseph Marsh

First Blows

Sitting on the settee on one side of the large blue painted living room, I watch my uncle Dominic drink from his glass. His throat throbs with the falling liquid. We sit on opposite sides of the room, to maintain social distancing. From this distance, the effect that the Covid- 19 Virus had on his body is made clear to me.

When I saw Dominic for the first time, I was unprepared for what I would see. My mind went to images I had seen of starving people in concentration camps. His legs, thin and bony, shook under his own weight, and his dressing gown hung loose from him in an almost comical manner. His swollen belly jutted out. The image of a child in their father’s clothes comes to mind. When my eyes fall on the scars around his neck, Dominic pulls his gown to the side to give me a better look and I see the thick pink lines etched like tattoos. These scars indicate where for three weeks he had a tracheostomy in his throat sucking mucus out of his lungs and keeping him alive.

For my twenty one years of life, Dominic had been a constant figure of strength. The owner of a gym, he had always been large and muscular, working hard to maintain his high standards of physical health. Before he had fallen ill, Dominic’s body was in the best condition it had ever been, his body weighed sixteen stone two and was able to squat two-hundred-and-seventy kilograms. With shoulders wide and powerful and arms thick as steel girders, there were points when he was close to breaking national records for weightlifting. Strength exuded from him like a gas. This strength, which Dominic had cultivated over years of rigorous training, the professionals at Royal Papworth Hospital attribute to saving his life once he’d succumbed to his illness. Without his training, he would not have survived.

A month prior to his hospitalisation, whenever Dominic would train, a few days later he would feel washed out. Despite the fact that practically, the training was going well, there was an overbearing sense that something was wrong. His movements felt slow and groggy, his urine was the dark colour of aged book pages, his head ached while his temperature soared. It was like a hangover worse than any he had experienced before. Nevertheless, he soldiered on and continued training, whenever these periods of fatigue hit him he’d hit back harder with tougher training and physical challenges. He had unknowingly entered into a deadly game of cat and mouse with the virus which, though his battle was valiant, the virus was determined to win. Like a boxer oblivious to his opponent’s strength, no matter what he did there was no chance. For the following week, irritation rose in him like a flood, and he would snap at provocations which before he would let slide. Something was wrong but there was no telling the damage being done to him. Where weaker people would have fallen Dominic powered through. Could this be an explanation as to how the disease had taken such a devastating hold on his body? His heightened endurance making him more able to withstand it.

By Friday the thirteenth of March, the damage was done. Dominic was becoming repeatedly angry at the fact that he seemed to be constantly misplacing his phone while working at the gym. Whenever he put it down it was like a switch going off and he forgot where he had put it mere seconds ago. Hearing this shocked me as I’d always known Dominic to be composed and mentally sound so to hear not only of the physical side effects of the illness but also of its dramatic effects on the victim’s mental capacity left me with a dry and sober taste in my mouth. With his ire rising to its boiling point, he took the furious decision to set up the “Find my phone” App on his laptop. Typing out the simplest of searches was difficult and Dominic became engrossed in his task, his rage consuming him to the point that he was blind to the other people in the gym. His vision clouded red, then blurred, then darkness encroached.

By a stroke of luck or divination, a client of his, a doctor named Edwina, came to the gym at an unusual time for her. Dominic looked up and saw her come through the red door before the darkness finished its descent. It was at this moment that Dominic became unconscious. Edwina rushed to his aid, when she checked his pulse there was nothing, his heart had stopped. Time was of the essence, she hurried to get him out of the chair and into the recovery position. His large body weighing heavy in her arms, he dropped the final ten inches to the floor which was the jerk he needed to jump start his heart back into action.

When Dominic came to once more, Edwina took a sample of his blood and told him what had happened to him. Breathless and fatigued, Dominic realised that without Edwina coming at the moment that she did, he would have died. This brush with the eternal blackness was not enough to demoralise him. Recollecting himself and gritting his teeth, he continued to work, overseeing his gym until the day was done. The next day Edwina told him that the blood test had come back negative with Covid-19.

With his health clearly on the decline, Dominic took the difficult decision to close the gym for a week so that he could rest and recuperate. That weekend was spent shivering due to his body’s inability to get warm for which he begins to take paracetamol. Complications mounted and with no foreseeable solution, Dominic was seen by Edwina once more and given another blood test. Edwina leaves him after prescribing a regime of antibiotics and assuring him as best as she could, his body still shaking with the cold that only he felt.

That night, amidst a restless sleep, Dominic experienced the first of a series of dramatic episodes which would cement themselves into his mind in the weeks to come. As midnight passed and the minutes of the night ticked past, Dominic awoke with the need to use the toilet. Dragging himself out of the miniscule warmth of the blankets, he shuffled to the bathroom. The hour kept his vision limited and it wasn’t until he slipped inside and turned the light on that the full extent of the virus’ damage became clear to him.

What he saw when he looked down at his body was enough to make any person’s heart race. The oxygen in his blood had been cut off and from the resultant starvation his skin had turned black as coal. Looking up in the mirror, there was the cold, unnerving sight of a dark figure like a ghost staring back at him, wide-eyed and afraid. The disease had taken a strangle hold on his body and it was clear now that something had to be done, it was no longer possible to go on ignoring the disease as he once had.

The next morning Dominic received a call from Edwina who had taken his blood. Edwina said that he was showing signs of kidney failure and needed to get to a hospital as soon as possible for further testing. Dominic called his sister, Janet to pick him up and drive him to the Luton and Dunstable hospital. Due to the high population of people on lockdown the network servers were crowded and so there was initial difficulty speaking to him. Eventually the message got through and Janet rushed to Dominic’s house.

When she arrived, the man she saw looked more like a zombie than a living person. His skin had turned a mottled grey and his shoulders had sunk deep as if being pulled down. His body was so weak that he couldn’t get into the car on his own and the journey passed in what felt to him as a haze. Twice, Dominic coughed, raising his arm in an effort to shield Janet from the germs. Dominic was obviously sick and Janet knew that she’d be no use if she was as well, so she opened her window and stuck her head out of it to avoid the germs.

When she arrived at the hospital she parked in front of A&E, behind an ambulance. In the back of her mind she knew that she probably shouldn’t have done so but her instincts had taken over and the only thing on her mind was saving her brother. There was no way he’d be able to walk from a car park.

Leaving Dominic in the car, she tried to get into the hospital to alert the awaiting nurses that they had arrived but was locked out. By a stroke of luck there was a doctor nearby who used his fob to open the door. When Janet entered, she saw the room alive with activity. To her left a woman lay sprawled in a hospital bed with a mask over her mouth. Doctors rushed around her. The chaos resembled things she had seen in movies. After telling the receptionist that Dominic had arrived they provided her with a wheelchair and a face mask. While they explained how to put the mask on, she asked if it was for her. The receptionist furrowed her eyebrows and grinned. “No,” the receptionist said, “it is for Dominic.”

Once Dominic was ready, Janet helped him into the wheelchair, put the mask over his mouth, and they returned to the hospital. They were met at the door by a nurse and told that she needed to move her car. Leaving the car park, their younger sister Michelle called Janet saying that she wanted to see Dominic and to wait for her so that they could go together. When they returned to the reception they were told that they wouldn’t be able to see him. Janet didn’t know at the time but, for three months, this would be the last time she saw her brother in person.

Knockout

What followed was characterised by confusion for Dominic’s siblings. Neither Janet nor Michelle knew anything about what to expect or how to get more information. After they returned from the hospital, they met with Stuart, Dominic’s brother and spoke to Dominic on the phone.

Michelle tried to carry on her work the next day but as the hours passed and no news came of Dominic, her anxiety rose. The staff at the hospital remained baffled about Dominic as every test they made gave no explanation as to why he was falling ill. It wasn’t until half past five that evening, when all three of the siblings had heard nothing and were beginning to panic that Michelle made the decision to see him no matter what.

Michelle picked up a set of pyjamas, and some toiletries for Dominic and drove to the hospital. When she spoke to the receptionist to ask how she could get to the High Dependency Unit she was given directions without fuss. At the time it didn’t occur to Michelle just how dangerous it was for her to be there, the only thing she was focusing on was making sure that her brother was safe. Following the receptionist’s instructions, Michelle came to a large double door with the windows inside covered by a white sheet. Her vision obstructed, Michelle peered into the room through a small gap in the covering in the corner of the window where she saw an army of nurses rushing around a figure she could not see.

A nurse came out to see what she was doing and Michelle replied that she had come to see her brother. The nurse seemed to bite her lip as she considered this but soon decided to allow Michelle into the room to see her brother. When she saw him, he was sat in a chair with an oxygen mask over his face waiting for his bed to be inflated so that he could lie down.

Before she could go anywhere near Dominic, the nurses made sure to put Michelle in full Personal Protective Equipment. Stood on an absorbent pad, first a plastic shawl was draped over, then a face mask, this was followed by a blue plastic cap like a shower cap, a long plastic apron, latex gloves and blue plastic shoe covers. Bedecked and armoured, she stepped toward her brother. The nurses who were clad similarly, rushed about checking the monitors and helping Dominic as best they could.

Michelle tried to strike a conversation with Dominic. She asked if he was alright, and how he was feeling. Dominic was a man of many words, a great conversationalist but the disease had made him so weak that he struggled to speak and only managed to get a few short sentences out so Michelle focused instead on making sure that he was comfortable.

Michelle, anxious to help went to her brother and felt that his skin was slick with sweat and hot to the touch. She pressed the importance for him not to cross his legs as it would disrupt his circulation. When this proved difficult she asked one of the nurses to get a pillow for him to rest his legs on. As the pillow was brought Dominic snapped at Michelle to leave the nurses alone.

Michelle ignored this and continued to care for Dominic’s comfort which allowed the nurses to focus on the medical aspect of taking care of him. To address the sweat which drenched his body, Michelle took wet paper towels and gently patted his weak body down to prevent overheating.

When Dominic finally lay in the bed he coughed and turned to the nurse, he told her that he had had an accident. Michelle stepped out of view behind the screen to prevent Dominic the shame of being cleaned in front of his sister.

There came a point when the nurses asked Michelle to help work a monitor by his bed which she did. She was like a civilian during a war forced to work as a medic, she knew the duty she had to help as much as she could and embraced it fully. For two and a half hours she did this, working diligently, before she was told she would have to leave. Before she left, Dominic told her to take everything back with her; his phone, his keys, everything had to go, he thought that he would not need them again.

She was stripped of her protective equipment by the nurses who pressed on her the importance of disinfecting her body. The contact that she’d had with Dominic would be extremely dangerous if she managed to spread it. A sanitising gel called “Nilaqua” was spread over her gloves before she was allowed to take them off and again once they were off. After washing her hands one more time she was told that when she went home, she must wash everything she was wearing and take a hot bath.

Later that evening, Dominic called Stuart and told him that things looked bad and there seemed to be dark times ahead. They were going to put Dominic in an induced coma so that they could better monitor his condition. As a result of these dire conditions, Dominic informed Stuart that he was the executor of his will. This was the moment that Stuart realised the gravity of it all. Dominic was at the brink of death and for him to get back from it would take a Herculean effort. The future was unclear but preparations had to be made for the worst case scenario which seemed increasingly likely. The words which Dominic said on that phone call to his brother would stick with Stuart for the coming months. “Ava gets everything,” he said, even as he prepared to throw himself into the care of others, his mind was focused on making sure that his daughter would be all right.

After his call with Stuart had finished, Dominic called Ava and explained to her what was happening to him. Having to prepare your own daughter for your possible death is an unbearable trial under normal circumstances. It’s impossible to imagine how difficult it must have been without being able to see her in person, to hold her hand, or to wipe her tears.

Three days later, Stuart received a call from the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge. Dominic was being transferred there so that they could put him on one of their ECMO machines because they were unable to stabilise the oxygen level in his blood in the Luton & Dunstable. This emphasised the seriousness of Dominic’s condition. Realising that the days ahead of his family would be the toughest they had faced, Stuart called a meeting of his siblings to decide their next movements. Michelle was on the phone to Janet, explaining what Dominic had said, when Stuart came to Michelle’s door and told her to get in the car. They went silently to Janet’s house, their minds racked with worry for Dominic. In Janet’s living room, Stuart told them Dominic’s condition and said the harsh reality that there may come the time when they would be asked to make a decision regarding’s Dominic’s continued care. Stuart had already made his decision but he needed to know what his sisters thought.

Their response was unanimous. They knew that if there was even a slim chance that Dominic could pull through, then he would. As long as survival was a possibility they would keep on fighting for him, just as he would keep on fighting to be with his family once more. They all knew Dominic’s strength, both physically and mentally, if there was anyone who could survive, it was Dominic.

While they spoke, Michelle received a call from Ava which she took. She wanted support in the confusion she felt, knowing that her father was ill. They spoke for as long as they could but soon it became too much for Michelle and she broke into tears. Stuart took the phone, speaking to Ava for as long as she needed. What do you say to someone when for all you knew their father was dying? This is a question that many of us hope we never have to ask. It is often easy to forget the effect that one person has on others. The tearful months, not knowing what was coming and restricted to one phone call a day which they never knew when was coming. The father, distraught every night knowing he couldn’t do anything to help his eldest son. Ava, Dominic’s child, was so affected by her father’s condition that she needed a lot of support to help her address the emotions which plagued her. It demonstrates how Covid-19’s reach extends much farther than the person it afflicts. The tendrils of disease are longer than anyone can realise.

Back in the Ring

When Dominic arrived at Papworth, that was when the real battle began. They had confirmed that he had the Covid-19 virus, and now the medical staff were going to do everything they could to rid him of it. Compared to the months of struggling which were to come, everything he had experienced before was mere child’s play.

The first thing that the doctors did was to put him on the ECMO machine. ECMO stands for Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, and the machine is designed to work in a similar way to a heart-lung bypass machine. It is used to pump and oxygenate the blood therefore taking the strain off the lungs and heart so that they can be worked on by medical staff, like a spotter taking a weight from a lifter’s shoulder.

In a similar way, he was put on a kidney dialysis to make sure that his blood was being cleaned properly after nearly entire kidney failure.

From the twenty-first of March, Dominic was heavily sedated while the doctors struggled to fight the virus. Two days later they conducted an MRI scan which confirmed that he had four hematomas of the brain, which is when there is bleeding outside of blood vessels, and had several blood clot in his lung on the twenty-seventh of March, an x-ray showed the extent of the virus’s effect on his lungs. They resembled two clumps of fallen snow, pure white, filled to the brim with mucus and cutting off his circulation. To think that this had been building inside him, all while he pushed his body to its limits, is testament to his fortitude.

While the ECMO machine worked hard giving his blood the oxygen it needed, the doctors spent day and night working to clear his lungs so that he could breath once more on his own. On the thirtieth of March, the hospital informed Stuart that they intended to perform a tracheostomy. This allowed them to feed a tube down his windpipe in order to fill his lungs with oxygen. Initially, this tracheostomy was unstable which the nurses attributed to the change in airflow. After years of breathing from his mouth, the new position was uncomfortable. After diligent efforts they managed to claw him back to stability.

From then onward, the condition of lungs began to slowly improve. In deep sedation, Dominic had no way of knowing the extent of the campaign to save his life that the medical staff were undergoing.

For two weeks, steady progress was made. Dominic was slowly weaned off the ECMO machine as the tracheostomy provided more oxygen to his body. Every day his airwaves were cleared of mucus and on the sixth of April he was taken off of the kidney dialysis and able to urinate freely.

Two days later, Stuart had a dream. He dreamt that Dominic had rung him to tell him that he was back in the game and to get the gym ready for reopening. The following morning, Stuart received a call from the hospital saying that they had cleared his lungs of mucus and debris and that he was coming out of his coma. Coincidence or act of prescience, this strange sequence of events was enough to give Stuart a burst of hope in the dark times which he had been struggling in. The weight on his shoulders were immense, having to hear of his brother’s critical condition while also trying to shield his family from the worst of it all. This was much needed news.

For the following week, the good news continued. His eyes began to twitch showing limited consciousness and he was being taken off the ECMO machine for gradually longer times until the eleventh of April when he was taken completely off it. Three days later he came out of the coma and was weaned off the ventilator but put back on the dialysis machine for his kidneys.

From this point they began to test his physical reactions, squeezing his hand to check his responses and trialling CPAP oxygen masks so that he could have oxygen pumped into his lungs without the use of the tracheostomy.

The progress was slow but reassuring. He started to breath unaided, sat on a chair and awake, for growing periods of time. After a blood transfusion for anaemia, things were finally looking up.

On the twentieth of April, Stuart was called so that Dominic could hear his voice. Things moved quickly after that. By the twenty-second of April, his eyes were opening and he was nodding in response to questions, he no longer require his kidney filtering machine. On the twenty-sixth of April, they started to consider taking him off the tracheostomy and on the second of May, Stuart had his first facetime call with Dominic. Stuart had not seen his brother for seven weeks and the emotional sight did a lot to boost his hopes.

For seven weeks Dominic had been in a coma. Those are seven weeks that he will not be able to get back. Seven weeks in which he has little to no idea the kind of things that were happening to him, the legion of supporters wishing him well on his road to recovery and the feverish work which was being done by the doctors to cure him. Without his strength, he would not have survived. While his physical strength made him able to withstand the disease’s blow, his mental fortitude kept him going. Synapses shooting off to keep him active. He may never know what his body had done in those seven weeks of darkness, but Dominic remembers all too well the work of his mind.

While many wondered if Dominic’s life would end, his mind was creating for him an entirely new life. So came a series of hallucinatory experiences which to the present day, Dominic isn’t sure where the line between reality and fabrication was drawn.

The first of these hallucinations centred around a black woman who was taking care of him. This woman was no-nonsense, living a double life as a drug lord trying to conduct her business within the hospital as she took him around various rooms in the hospital along with her silent sidekick. Another, hallucination saw him in an animated film centred around himself and a group of kittens during the height of the Second World War. Then he led a life as the manager of a funeral parlour.

The most dramatic hallucination, would be the friendship he struck up with a nurse working at the ward he was in. It occurred to Dominic that this man seemed awfully familiar and asked if he knew a friend of his who he’d trained with named Mark Moss. The nurse revealed himself to be Mark’s nephew and the two sparked up a deep friendship. This friendship developed over what Dominic perceived to be several days. When Dominic had finally gotten out of his coma he called Mark Moss and asked him if he had a nephew that worked in the hospital. Mark revealed that he didn’t have any nephews. Dominic had struck up a friendship with a man who didn’t exist.

After these seven weeks, he was transferred back to the Luton & Dunstable, he was still confused after the heavy sedation. Twice he attempted to escape the hospital, the most extreme of the cases being at five o’clock in the morning of the ninth of May. He’d awoken believing himself to be back home and thought that the staff were people who had broken into his house. He called the police and for Stuart to come get him. Stuart snapped at him and told him to get back into bed. After this he calmed down somewhat, though he remained agitated until his release from hospital.

On the twelfth of May, Dominic received the news that his most recent test for Covid-19 had come back negative. The doctors prepared to perform a MoCA assessment to test his cognitive abilities which were steadily improving. On the sixteenth of May, scans revealed that Dominic still had a Hematoma on the brain and a nerve contusion. The MoCA assessment revealed that Dominic’s long term memory was intact while his short term memory was not as effective. His right foot required pain relief and he still required some speech therapy.

On the eighteenth of May, Dominic decided that he wanted to discharge himself from hospital which was inconvenient as the hospital still needed to run some tests. After a call from the registrar, Stuart once again told him to shut up and get back into bed, convincing him to remain a night of tests to make sure that he was fit to go home.

The next day, he was discharged from hospital and taken home. Many believed that Dominic would require weeks of rehabilitation but Dominic had other ideas. From the moment he had left the hospital, he was devising his own physiotherapy routine to bring himself back to fitness. In four days, he was walking unaided by crutches or walking frames. Though it would be many months before he was back to his former strength, the speed of the recovery he has made has been outright miraculous. Without his knowledge of the body and how to build its strength, he would likely have remained bedridden for weeks.

A Winner Emerges and Reflects

On the fourth of July, Dominic intends to reopen his gym with renewed considerations to ensure that all hygienic precautions are taken against Cobid-19. As someone who has experienced first-hand, the ravages that the disease takes on the body, he understands more than most just how important it is to take precautions against it. Precautions which are not limited to the likes of hand sanitizer, face masks, and social distancing. If Dominic had not crafted his body with years of rigorous training, it would have not been in the condition necessary to withstand the trials it underwent.

When the world is consumed with confusion about how this disease works, one of the only truly effective defences we have is to ensure that our bodies are as fit and healthy as they can be. The fact that the disease still managed to attack Dominic when he was at the level of strength he was demonstrates its insidious and wholly unpredictable power. There is no telling who the next person to fall victim to it will be. The only thing we can do is to try to bring our bodies to the point when they are able to withstand its rigours just as Dominic’s did. Even though his body would not return to its former glory for months, he’s devoted to making sure that he gives others the chance for survival that he had. That is why he is working so hard to bring himself to a condition where he can reopen his gym.

Recalling the sight of those pure white slabs which were his lungs, Dominic realises just how close to death he had been. On that settee in that blue room, the emotion is written plain as the nose on his face. The fear emanating from the memory of the pain, the hallucinations, the months of treatment and the worry for his family; Dominic wants to save as many people as he can from that. He knows that it’s nothing anyone should have to go through. It is a disease that no one can afford to play with.

Dom's Covid Rehabilitation

Fri, 18 Feb 2022 16:33:15 GMT

Dom's long road to recovery, and reflections on the lasting effects

Physical and psychological impacts

There are often stories from people who have gone to the brink of death and returned. Stories of drastic character change where the inescapable truth of one’s immortality forces people to look into themselves and see what is truly valuable, what is truly important in life. Ebenezer Scrooge turns from a greedy miser to the most generous man in London when confronted with the possibility of a funeral without grievers, Saul turns from a villain to a saint when blinded on the road to Damascus. In essence, a brush with death is supposed to imbue one with a clarity of mind. However, in the real world this is often not so. In Dominic Marsh’s case it is the very virus which brought him so close to death which kept poisoned his mind and left it bruised in ways which none could foresee.

When Dominic returned home, he was unable to move from one room to another without a Zimmer frame. His thin, emaciated legs too weak to carry him. The first thing he wanted to do was to have a shower, unwittingly he had subjected himself to his first physical and mental test. Firstly, how could he get into the shower? This body which was once filled with strength and power had been sucked of all its vitality, of all its substance and left a husk. It’s difficult to imagine what it would be like to suddenly find yourself helpless when you had previously prided yourself on your ability to hold your own. He called for his father “papa, I need your help”. Dominic’s eighty-five-year-old father dutifully helped his first-born son into the shower. As he was about to step in, he turned and looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. What he saw chilled him to the bone. It looked as if his father, was helping his father, into the shower. Dominic immediately burst into tears. This would be the first and last time he would cry at the sight of his body. As the owner of a gym with 38 years of experience building other people’s bodies up, Dominic was in the unique place to know exactly what he had to do to bring himself back into shape. It was time to implement a plan of action

Regaining physical strength

Due to his three week coma, during which he was connected to a dialysis machine for kidney failure and ECMO machine which involved a tracheostomy to help him breath, he had gone from a healthy heavily muscled 16 stone and 4lbs to a drastically emaciated 11 stone and 2 lbs. This was the first thing that needed to be addressed. He focused on increasing his intake of calories through diet and the use of supplements. This was the easy part; the difficult part would be the workout routine he would need to undertake to bring him back to health.

Since his arrival home Dominic had been itching to get back into the gym. His first session was going to be an indication of what lay ahead. It was not good, it had taken him five minutes to cross the small floor of his gym with a Zimmer frame he was so weak. He had been so weakened by the virus that he could not even bench press a bar without any weights on it. He had to start literally, from scratch. There was no muscle memory, there was just intelligence, He decided to start off using solely the machines. There were three reasons for this, stability, flexibility and the most importantly, safety,

Starting in the right place

After three weeks of this, in which he was focusing on strengthening the muscles around his joints, he introduced the three basic exercises for muscle building. These are the squat, deadlift, and bench press. On his first attempt to squat he could only do three sets of ten just sitting up and down on a bench and with no weight. If you’re going to improve heart and lung capacity this was it. Initially he thought he was going to have a heart attack and needed to lie down for fifteen minutes. He could feel his heart pounding in his back. Every exercise was as if he had never done training before in his life. All his muscle memory had vanished, his lung capacity was low, his hands and shoulders were very weak, and due to his three months in bed he had lost a great deal of mobility.

. As the weeks went by every session saw an improvement. The machines had done their job. It was time to move to free weights, three sets of weightless squats for ten had transformed in sixteen weeks to a set of five with 200 kg. He’d gone from being unable to bench at all to benching 120 kg for five reps. When he’d first attempted the deadlift, he thought his back would break after dead lifting 60 kg for five then by week sixteen, he was lifting 210 kg.

It takes a great deal of mental fortitude to even attempt something like this. As anyone who had naively joined a gym at the start of the new year then abandoned it by the end of January could testify, it is daunting enough to start from scratch. But to have built one’s whole life around fitness and health and then find yourself back at the beginning would seem an almost insurmountable challenge to many. Every week was as hard as the last as Dominic struggled desperately to claw himself back to health each time going for what feels like world records. But with the help of his brother he persevered. In order to help with the mental strain, he devised a unique training plan . He started alternating his workouts so that one week he would go to his limit and the following week he’d go light and give his muscles and mind their much-needed rest. Another important part of Dominic’s rehabilitation was weekly deep muscle sports massages which doctor Edwina the same doctor who had saved his life would perform.

Choosing the right fuel

As Dominic was focusing on increasing his calories to fuel his recovery, the two main foods he was eating were carbohydrates and proteins. Breakfast would include four Weetabix with fruit on top, semi-skimmed milk, toast with honey, and a cup of coffee to fight the fatigue that the virus had given him. Lunch and dinner consisted of foods with a high amount of carbohydrates, often pasta or potatoes with sauces rich in calories. He would take supplements of zinc, vitamin C, and creatine as well as protein shakes. Between meals he would eat plenty of fruit washed down with semi-skimmed milk. This was all with the purpose to return Dominic to a healthier weight to build upon. This diet had two main objectives. to get bigger and to get stronger!

Healthy body - healthy mind?

While his physical recovery was progressing at a steady pace, all thanks to Dominic’s expertise, his mental recovery wasn’t producing as encouraging results. Due to heavy damage that he suffered to his right temporal lobe, his ability to rationalise emotionally was severely affected. Often, he would repeat words and stories in the middle of conversations. Other times he would forget simple words that before would have come easily to him. Another side effect of his brain damage is that huge swathes of his memory that was lost, he had made phone calls to whilst in hospital and subsequently at home, he had no recollection of these conversations. A cruel symptom of the of what the virus had done to his memories was to completely erase details regarding the recent end of his relationship with his long-term partner. Two years of this relationship had been totally eradicated from his memory.

It is now believed that the virus had cemented its hold in Dominic at least approximately six weeks before his hospitalisation. A unique situation highlighted this strange symptom of the virus. When his girlfriend of six and a half - years walked out on him without a word Dominic barely responded. There was no anger, no resentment, no anguish, only an overwhelming sense of numbness. The night she left Dominic had returned home from work at nine thirty pm. She had gone without any warning. He spoke to his brother who had come around, tidied his house and went to sleep without a care in the world. There was no reaction whatsoever. Over the next few days, this nothingness continued. In times of type of emotional strain, usually Dominic’s training would take a heavy hit but instead he was doing the best he had done in decades. It was as if all his emotional functions had shut off, leaving his body to work like a machine.

As the understanding of the virus continues questions are being answered. Apparently, the virus can trick the body into feeling fine right up to the last minute. This would explain Dominic’s ability to train so hard almost right to his hospitalization. Within seven days of his last mammoth training session, his body would turn black and he would be rushed to hospital with lungs so filled with mucus that they showed up as solid white on an x-ray. The damage to his right temporal lobe would leave him unable to rationalise emotional reactions for months.

When Dominic came out of hospital, his memory of his girlfriend’s leaving him had gone completely. He had made telephone calls to his ex-partners, his family, the doctor who had saved his life, he had even called the police accusing the hospital of kidnap. He to this day still has no recollection of any of these conversations. He does have texts that he sent that are absolute gobble de gook which emphasise the damage that was caused at the time. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the ending of the relationship prior to the hospitalization was the most serious consequence of the damage to the front temporal lobe.

To Dominic the relationship had been idyllic the whole time and her leaving came out of the blue. His memories consisted of parties and family get together and fantastic holidays. Subsequently Dominic would spend weeks talking to anyone that would listen, asking the same questions, “where is she, she should be here by now, I nearly died!! “ . To Dominic this event had happened a few weeks ago. In reality nearly four months had passed. Dominic’s family and friends would look at each other incredulously, bowing their heads,

One day in the gym it took Dominic’s brother to loses his temper and tell him all the things that had been wrong with the relationship for Dominic to realise what the virus had done to his mind.

The brain damage had caused Dominic to forget the events in his relationship going back almost two years and instead putting him in the mindset of what he perceives as a better time.

Looking for the cause

Realising that there was obviously something wrong, Dominic decided to consult the doctor who had saved his life when he collapsed in the gym. Initially she thought it may have been Post Traumatic Stress Disorder due to an armed robbery which had occurred the year before. Basically, two armed assailants, one with a knife and taser and one with a gun had broken into Dominic’s house while he was inside. They made him open his safe take out his money and then tasered him three time whilst making their getaway. On hearing them leave Dominic jumped up grabbed a crowbar and managed to catch up with the armed robbers. He struck the main perpetrator with the crowbar from which the police obtained DNA which resulted in the assailant’s arrest and incarceration for nine and a half years. However, after studying the MRI scans it was clear that Dominic was experiencing these mental problems due to brain damage caused by extensive bleeds in his brain.

More than just memories

This drastic memory loss is the most impactful of side effects that came as a result of his brain damage. But there was other side effects .Chocolate which had once been a favourite guilty pleasure now smelt revolting as he could only smell the fat and sugar but not the cocoa, his hand-eye co-ordination had been drastically affected as he could no longer hit a dart board with a dart and instead hit the wall several inches to the left. When his brother snapped at him in the gym whilst he was rambling about his ex-girlfriend Dominic was completely unable to muster an emotional response. Another thing that people where finding strange was Dominic’s lack of emotion about the predicament he had been in, even though he had nearly died none of it seemed real to him. His daughter and sister had to have counselling regarding his battle with COVID-19 but he seemed un moved by it all.

Often when he spoke to his family he would be condescending and rude without realising. It seemed as if the virus had removed the socialisation that people build up over time and now had to relearn how to read social cues again.

Though the larger effects of the brain damage have faded away, there are still problems which need to be addressed. Whereas before he was in a state of perpetual calm due to the emotional centre of the brain being affected by the virus, his emotional responses have gone a full 180 degrees and now he has to stop himself from losing his temper at the smallest thing or bursting into tears at the drop of a hat. There is clearly still a long way to go before Dominic is back to full physical and mental health. One of strangest symptom of all is the fact he has no recollection all the phone calls he made whilst in hospital to his family, friends , ex-girlfriends and even to the police and the inappropriate conversations he had but has no recollection of , he can only apologise to any other people he has inappropriately called . The list grows daily. He is continuing with his rehabilitation and making remarkable gains. His mental state now seems back to normal. Although processing memories with his emotional capabilities intact have been exhausting for him. We will keep everyone posted with future developments.

If you are in the same position - we can help, Covid or another condition

If you have had Covid and you are struggling with your physical or mental rehabilitation do not hesitate in contacting Dominic either through his website www.domsgym.co.uk or call him on 07803005482.

719145ee

Dominic’s Fight With Covid-19

Dominic’s Fight With Covid-19

By Joseph Marsh ﻿

First Blows

Knockout

Back in the Ring

A Winner Emerges and Reflects

Dom's Covid Rehabilitation

Dom's long road to recovery, and reflections on the lasting effects

Physical and psychological impacts

Regaining physical strength

Starting in the right place

Choosing the right fuel

Healthy body - healthy mind?

Looking for the cause

More than just memories

If you are in the same position - we can help, Covid or another condition

By Joseph Marsh