A dad described by doctors as "one of the sickest Covid patients we’ve ever seen" has learnt to walk again after spending nearly a year in hospital.
Andrew Watts became so sick that doctors called his family to tell them they were considering switching his ventilator off.
But now, after spending eight months in intensive care and another two months on a ward, the 40-year-old, from Bexley in London, has finally been sent home, My London reports.
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Andrew was admitted to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich with Covid-19 pneumonia after he fell ill on Christmas Day last year.
The black cab driver was in an induced coma for five weeks.
After a life-threatening lung collapse, Andrew's health deteriorated to such an extent that doctors warned his family in February that they were considering taking him off life support.
Andrew said he first started to feel unwell a week before Christmas.
“I wasn’t eating and I was losing weight, but I thought it was just the anxiety getting to me," he said.
"When I was admitted to hospital with Covid I initially responded well to treatment, but then my oxygen levels started to drop and I was taken for a CT scan. That was when I was told that I had a pneuomothorax, which is a split on the lung.
“I was on my own as this was the height of Covid, with no visitors allowed, so it was a lot to take in.
"By this point I was crying my eyes out, on the phone to my sister Hannah and my wife Hayley, but I didn’t want to tell my mum or my dad. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them.”
Fortunately, after overcoming a second collapse, Andrew’s lungs began to improve.
He was able to come off the ventilator in June 2021.
Andrew’s wife, along with his two sons six-year-old Jack and three-year-old Joshua, visited him in hospital, but he could only communicate by pointing a stick at letters on a board.
Andrew had to learn to walk and talk again after being on a ventilator for such a long period of time.
The last two years have been particularly traumatic for Andrew, who was diagnosed with lymph cancer in October 2019. But chemotherapy treatment had been successful and a few months before his Covid diagnosis, he was in remission and on the mend.
“I kept thinking ‘why me?’,” Andrew said. “It was very hard to stay positive. But I remembered how when I was going through my chemotherapy I was told to look forward, set myself little goals and when I’d achieved them set myself another one. So that’s what I did.”
Due to being vulnerable, Andrew has spent the majority of 2020 carefully shielding.
Many staff – doctors, nurses, physios and speech and language therapists – got to know Andrew during his stay, and they all turned out to say goodbye on October 21, when he was finally allowed to go home.
Dr Dan Harding, Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine, said: “We are all really proud and pleased that Andrew has finally been able to go home after 10 months in hospital.
"He was one of the sickest Covid patients we’ve seen, so to see him walking out of the hospital with his family was a very happy and emotional day for me and all the other staff involved in his care.”
Hospital staff lined the corridor in Ward 23 to say an emotional goodbye to him.
“The care has been fantastic,” Andrew said. “But my journey is nowhere near finished yet.
"Going home is one major goal, but then that just starts another road in my recovery. I started walking just four weeks ago, and my next goal is to walk to my son’s school and back by Christmas.”
