Because Lois’s friend does not have corona, she decides to temporarily live with her parents. “He has his own business, so I really didn’t have to light him up. My parents and I jokingly called it the ‘corona house’. Seven days after the positive test, my complaints suddenly became very bad: I was short of breath and could no longer climb the stairs.”
“Then you panic, because you can’t breathe. My mother had it too. Can’t breathe, that’s such a scary feeling. She called the doctor, and on day eight we were taken to the hospital.”
Baby
Lois’s oxygen level is so low that she is taken to a specialized hospital in Ghent two hours later – also with a view to the baby. “I thought: I’ll grab two underwear and a toothbrush and I’ll be home tomorrow. I didn’t realize how bad it was for me.”
“My mother was still in Terneuzen, I was alone in Ghent. Since a 26 week old baby has a good chance of surviving, and I was 25 weeks pregnant, I was asked, “What do you want us to do?”
In other words: should the doctors do their best, when Lois’s condition is so bad, to get the baby? “I just thought: huh. What kind of crazy question is that? Just do your best, is the first thing I said. I had not yet considered the consequences, I had not expected the question at all.”
Intensive care
The baby presses on your organs, which in turn press on your airways. If the extra oxygen doesn’t work, the baby would have to be taken from Lois. “Of course you don’t take that into account at all. But if they would ask me again now, I would have answered the same.”
Lois is then given an extra ten liters of oxygen and is in the mid-care department for two days. “There you are on the IV, with a lot of wires. Keep a camera pointed at you. But because it didn’t get better, they took me to the intensive care unit.”
physio
Lois is in ICU for five days in total, followed by two more days in mid-care. “Everything only dawned on me when I got home. I was probably so sick that I thought: it will be all right. When I was driven into the IC, I also looked straight ahead. I didn’t want to see what bad things were happening around me.”
The occupational health doctor and the gynaecologist recommend physiotherapy to rebuild the condition – which has completely disappeared at that time. “I was already having trouble unloading the dishwasher. Not good, if you have yet to give birth.”
She’s been there about ten times. When she got home after an appointment, she lay dead tired on the couch. “That was not the intention either. So I had to stop and walk in circles and cycle on my own power. But without the physio I wouldn’t even have started this.”
Concentration problem
The condition is now – ten weeks later – slightly better. The ability to concentrate is still a problem. “I don’t read a newspaper or magazine, it just doesn’t work. I do watch Netflix, but in an episode of one hour, I do two hours. I often have to pause it and walk away, because then I have no idea what it is about.”
“I’m not worried about the birth. I have to give birth on the monitor, they keep a close eye on me. There are still people who say: corona is just a flu. I immediately unfollow people on Facebook or Instagram when they say this. I find it very difficult to read or hear to deny that there is a disease.”
Read also
Everything we know about pregnancy and corona, told by a gynecologist
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