Dr Zoe: How I recovered from coronavirus

Last week our resident doctor Zoe joined us live from her home where she and her boyfriend were self-isolating after showing symptoms of coronavirus.

Well Dr Zoe came out of self-isolation yesterday, and today she was back to work, answering your questions about coronavirus.

Dr Zoe revealed: “I’m on day 10 and I was back to work yesterday in the practice, although most of the consultations were over the telephone and I’m feeling almost back to normal. Just still wouldn’t go for a run, wouldn’t exercise because I’m still not completely back to full strength, but no more infective symptoms at all.”

Zoe continued: “Working in my clinic yesterday, everything is different. I can’t send patients for routine blood tests, I can’t send patients for routine x-rays, I can’t refer a patient. I saw a patient that had a hernia, I can’t do a routine referral for that patient to have their surgery.”

On her recovery, Dr Zoe admitted: “I think it’s a slow recovery and certainly from my own experience… having self-isolated for seven days, I needed that time to recover. So even though my fever and my cough subsided after two days, actually I was sleeping for 12 hours a night still. I was achy and just exhausted.”

Speaking about those seriously affected by the virus and who will need ventilation support, Zoe advised: “If I use myself as an example, I’m on day 10 from when I first got symptoms, but I probably caught this five days before that. If I was going to be one of those unfortunate people that needed a ventilator, today would be the day I would need it. So that’s 15 days after I picked up the virus. So our actions today… are affecting who is going to need a ventilator in 15 days’ time.”