One of Britain’s sickest coronavirus patients revealed how he lost five stone in five weeks while hooked up to a ventilator.
Kim Wai Li, 43, lost four inches from his waistline and dropped from 15 stone to just ten after he caught Covid-19 and ended up on dialysis.
The City software developer was only given a 20 per cent chance of survival after his lungs packed up, just days after he apparently caught the bug from a commuter train.
Now Kim Wai has released harrowing photos which show the extent of the physical toll the virus takes on a patient’s body.
And he admits that the fact he was overweight and ate junk food probably put him at higher risk.
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He was officially obese at 15 stone and 5ft 6ins when he entered hospital in mid March but ended up just 10 stone when he left on April 22.
He said: “It’s been one hell of a journey. Physically it was like a slap in the face.
“I didn’t recognise myself in the mirror when I saw how much weight I’d lost.
“I’m determined to keep my weight where it is. It’s a second lease of life.
“How else can you take it? You can either sit there and think ‘Wow that was a really depressing episode of my life’ and let it affect you or take it for what it is - that you’ve been very, very lucky.”
Kim Wai and his mother-in-law Ying Lau, 63, became ill on March 12.
The dad-of-two believes he caught the virus from a train on his way into the City as a software consultant.
Mrs Lau was sent to A&E by her GP due to her age and the fact she is diabetic after she developed crushing headaches.
Meanwhile Kim Wai was finding it hard to breathe and went into A&E at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, south east London, on the same day - March 17.
But his x-ray showed what doctors then suspected was a chest infection and he was sent home with antibiotics.
He assumed that with a week of medication he would be fine, but three days later his symptoms were so bad they were not manageable at home where he and his family were in self-isolation.
As well as struggling to breathe, he also developed loss of appetite and had constant nosebleeds.
After calling 111, he was told to go straight back to A&E by ambulance on March 20.
Shortly afterwards, his mother-in-law’s coronavirus test came back positive.
Describing his symptoms, he added: “It was harder than usual to breathe.
“I also had nosebleeds. There were two days where I constantly got them. It stopped then ten minutes later I would get another. I thought ‘this is not right.”
Kim Wai’s wife of five years, Ceri, 38, said: “He looked so unwell. He told me he needed help. We suspected corona because my mum had it and we’d all been in close contact.
“For some reason only he and my mum picked it up. Me and the boys were fine.”
But while his mother-in-law simply needed an oxygen mask and spent two weeks in hospital, Kim Wai’s condition quickly deteriorated.
At first they put him on nasal O2, then a mask, but they couldn’t get enough oxygen into him.
After five days, doctors called Ceri to say he needed ventilating and had been moved to intensive care at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where he was put into an induced coma.
“We were thinking this could actually kill him,” stay-at-home mum Ceri added.
But the ventilation wasn’t working and Ceri was told that Kim Wai’s only chance was a special machine at St Thomas’ Hospital in central London - the same one where Boris Johnson would end up a week later.
He was told he needed to be put on an ECMO machine - which pumps blood from the patient's body to an artificial lung that adds oxygen to it.
Amazingly just as they were getting ready to send him, Kim Wai rallied and signs that his lungs were coping began to emerge so he remained in hospital in Woolwich.
He woke up weeks later on April 9, but his kidneys were not filtering his blood properly and he was sent to King’s to have dialysis.
An initial test for COVID-19 was negative, flummoxing doctors, but a second one carried out on the dad-of-two days later was positive.
Kim Wai added: “I went in on a Friday and the following week it must have been really bad and had such an effect on me because I don’t remember that following week at all.
“I remember getting a care package, a delivery of food, telling the wife I was really struggling and that’s it. The next thing I remember was waking up in Kings.
“That was quite surprising. I knew my name and date of birth but I didn’t know what day it was or where the hell I was. He said I was in a coma and I was like ‘Say what now?”
The dad was so weak he could barely hold a phone after his bout with the virus and was shocked when he looked at his body to see it had shrunk so much.
An initial weigh-in saw him register at just 10 stone - meaning he had lost a stone a week during his bout with the virus.
He began to feel better and, as he began eating again, his strength slowly returned.
Kim Wai was discharged on April 22 - and returned home in an ambulance to surprise Ceri and his sons.
He has lost four inches off his waistline, going from 40ins to 36ins, and his blood pressure - high before he was diagnosed with coronavirus - is now normal.
Speaking about her husband’s shocking weight loss, Ceri said they are clamping down on his previously junk food-filled diet.
"He’s got a second chance. It’s a wake up call.
“When I opened the door I didn’t recognise him. His face was a lot slimmer. I was really shocked. So shocked that he had to ask me if he could come in.
“He couldn’t walk up the stairs. He struggled. He couldn’t shower himself. He couldn’t even use cutlery. It took him a week to be fully mobile, walking up and down the stairs. He’s getting much much better.”
Kim Wai says he cannot thank the nurses and doctors enough for saving him, but said the government should have carried out widespread testing earlier than it did.
He is still essentially in total lockdown as he fears going out and catching a second dose.
And Kim Wai agrees he now has a second chance, adding: “Seeing the family, the kids and my wife again, there was a huge sense of relief. I don’t do it often but i will admit I suddenly started crying.
“Throughout the dreams when I was sedated there was always one theme - to get home.
“I wanted to see my family, even if it was for the last time."
