Faith, hope and charity: how I survived coronavirus

I write this on Easter Sunday, sitting comfortably at home, recovering from my brush with Covid-19. I was hospitalised for 12 days, of which five were in intensive care fighting for my life. While the experience is still fresh — I came out of hospital nine days ago — I thought it may be useful to share some aspects of my journey. They can be divided, I think, into three themes: faith, hope and charity. To begin with, faith. Of all the images that came to me in intensive care, the strongest of all was that of Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee. At the time, if I coughed I was unable to perform a following in-breath as my lungs were full of infection. I was being kept alive by a respirator forcing air into my lungs through a pipe inserted into my throat. This inability to breathe quickly turns to panic. We can all remember larking about in a swimming pool and being held down one breath longer than we expected, with a subsequent adrenalin rush as we wriggled to get to air as quickly as possible. This was a magnified version of that. I would reach out and clasp the side of the bed — or the hand of the nurse — as panic set in. The appearance of Christ rising from sleep in the bow of the boat to calm the waters was precisely what I needed to calm the storm in my throat and in my mind. Jesus didn’t address me, but I felt His peace radiating out from the boat towards me. My storm abated.

Throughout my time in intensive care, I was aware of a world wide web of friends and family — together with many people I have never met — praying for my recovery.