Nurse who battled coronavirus urges people to seek medical help sooner

Central
birmingham
Tuesday 21 April 2020 at 11:04am

A nurse who battled coronavirus has urged people to seek medical help sooner if they feel they are deteriorating.

37-year-old Charlene Nelson is currently recovering at her home after contracting the virus.

The mum-of-one, who underwent a kidney transplant in 2015, fought off the disease after spending just under a week in hospital.

Charlene was initially taken to Sandwell Hospital for treatment. She 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 NHS staff 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.”

Miss Nelson, who also works as a nurse at Sandwell Hospital, said she started suffering shortness of breath on 12 April.

She explained: “I just couldn’t breathe. I called for an ambulance and it all felt like a big blur. I got into A&E and then I was put into isolation because of my symptoms.

“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."

Charlene says she soon started responding to the treatment and began improving.

Charlene said she doesn’t know how she contracted the disease as she had been wearing correct PPE during her time working at the hospital and had not been treating COVID-19 patients.

She added: “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.”