Heartbeat: COVID-19 positive nurse urges people to seek hospital help for disease

May 21, 2020

Colleague Charlene Nelson who battled coronavirus has urged people to seek medical help sooner if they feel they are deteriorating. The nurse, who is currently recovering at her home, was able to fight off the disease after spending just under a week in the hospital.

Charlene, who works as a bank nurse at Sandwell Hospital, said she started suffering shortness of breath on 12 April. “I just couldn’t breathe. I called for an ambulance, and it all felt like a big blur. I got into A&E and I was put into isolation because of my symptoms.”

Charlene was taken to Sandwell Hospital and said: “If I hadn’t dialled 999, who knows what sort of condition I would be in now. The care I received was brilliant, and colleagues are doing everything they can to help patients. I am so much better than I was a week ago. I’m just glad that I got treatment when I did.”

She added: “I was treated with antibiotics and tested for coronavirus. Because of my kidney condition, I was transferred to another hospital for further treatment. My results for COVID-19 came back positive. I was in a bad way for the first two days, and I was very scared. I soon started responding to the treatment and began improving.”

“I think there may be people out there who think they don’t need to go to the hospital or believe that their situation will worsen if they do go. However, my condition improved. I would also like to strongly urge people to stay indoors to protect those who are most vulnerable in our society.”

Charlene said she doesn’t know how she contracted the disease as she had been wearing the correct PPE during her time working at the hospital and had not been treating COVID-19 patients. “It could have been from handling post or when I was food shopping. I suppose we’ll never know where I got it from, which just shows how cautious we need to be.”