'It seemed like I had a piece of meat, not a throat': five stories of people who recovered from COVID-19

What is it like to see only doctors and a courier during a month of quarantine? Aren't you afraid of getting infected again? Is it difficult to cook breakfast after being sick? What to read in the hospital? Why did the wife become infected, but the mother-in-law did not? Journal correspondents with the BBC talked to five people who had had COVID-19 and were already discharged from hospitals.

Photo: Shutterstock

“We’ll have to go play in transition, like in the 90s”

Like many Russians, until March 2020, a sixty-year-old music teacher, Muscovite Igor P., knew almost nothing about the coronavirus.

“So, I read something in the media, I knew the general signs - fever, cough, nothing more,” he says.

Then, the man recalls, they wrote mainly about the prevention of the disease: “Not as fiercely and fiercely as now.”

Igor considered himself a “hopelessly healthy person”: four times a week he swam three kilometers in the pool and monitored his health. True, he smoked.

In early March, his temperature rose sharply - up to 38,5 degrees. Then the thermometer showed 39 degrees, a cough quickly appeared, there was a tightness in his chest, and it became difficult for Igor to breathe. For three days he lay at home, was treated with “improvised and temporary means” and drank an antibiotic that his wife gave him.

“Then I decided - good, I, of course, don’t like being sick, but there’s a full guard here, something urgently needs to be done. I called an ambulance. They tell me: “Put a cold compress on your forehead and lie down.”

I called again: “You know, guys, there’s clearly not enough cold cloth, come on, come on.” We've arrived. We listened. They say: “You have bronchitis.” They injected me with analgin,” recalls Igor.

He didn’t think then that he might have Covid-19: “I didn’t have contact with anyone who came from abroad, I didn’t communicate with people with coronavirus. But our school is commercial, my children and I study music in a separate class, and the children, with the last of their strength, with a fever and snot to the ground, crawl to us - because their parents paid. I was recently told that two more teachers at the school came down with a fever - I don’t know what they have.”

After an injection of analgin, which was injected into Igor by emergency doctors, the music teacher felt better. “I think I haven’t had a fluorography done for twenty years - I need to do it. I did it for a fee just in case, although the temperature was normal. And after the fluorography they told me: “Eh, guy, so you have pneumonia,” he recalls. With the photo in his hands, Igor called an ambulance again - and he was immediately taken to the hospital.

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At the hospital, he was amazed that all seven floors of the building were occupied by patients with pneumonia: “I’m used to the fact that there is a cardiology department and a urology department. And here - all the wards contain five people, all with pneumonia. I am an unpretentious person, I don’t care how many people are in the room, it’s hard to scare me, but such a number of pulmonary patients is strange. Upon admission, the emergency department told me: “Bilateral viral pneumonia” and took the first smear for coronavirus.”

For six days Igor was given IV drips and injected with penicillin: “I already felt fine when the doctor came and said: “Your test is negative, but according to the new order we cannot let you go, we need to take a second smear.” And he took a second swab.

Until the end of March, Igor, according to his own description, lay in the hospital just like that. Penicillin helped, he began to breathe freely, there was no cough, no fever. Slowly, Igor began to leave the building to smoke and noticed a strange thing - the hospital square, in which he was initially allowed to walk, was covered with barrier tape around the perimeter. Sometimes people died in the hospital, mostly elderly people.

After a couple of days, they were only allowed to walk on the porch, then everyone was completely forbidden to leave the wards. At the end of March, doctors told Igor that his second coronavirus test was lost, and the Covid-19 test needed to be taken again. “We took the third swab. I think it was on Tuesday. I waited two days, on Thursday I told the doctor: “Please write me home under my responsibility. You have new ones brought in here every day, the cough lasts all night until the morning, they’re all pulmonary patients.”

“I knew that I had to tear it out of there, be it a carcass or a stuffed animal,” explains Igor. “It has already become clear that half of the hospital has coronavirus. And the nurses always wore special clothes, like Martians, in rustling white suits. They ran around the clock like moon walkers, not sparing themselves like bees. There is only one young doctor in all 40 wards - I don’t know, she never went home at all, she was in the hospital all the time. A good woman, attentive - I would say smiling, but you can’t see a smile under a mask.”

The smiling doctor discharged Igor home - under the obligation to self-isolate for two weeks. And she added that he would be informed of the results of the latest study by telephone.

“And so I came home, happy, confident that everything was fine with me now. No fever, no cough, I’m as healthy as a bull, I can break dimes. I went to the store - wearing gloves, a muzzle, glasses and a hood,” Igor recalls.

Then I went out for a walk with the dog, and on the weekend I went to the dacha with my son - something needed to be nailed down. And on Monday they called: “Your test for coronavirus is positive.”

Then the “fun with the doctors” began at home, the music teacher recalls.

“They ran around me in spacesuits, jumped, took tests from the whole family for coronavirus. It turned out that my wife got it from me, and they found it on her. And my mother-in-law, who lives with us, did not become infected at all. Although this is very strange,” says Igor.

His wife tolerated the illness easily - she had a sore throat for a couple of days. But Igor is worried that he could have infected his son because of his trip to the dacha: “I call him every day. I am terribly ashamed and uncomfortable in front of him, although at the dacha we were in different parts of the site, and I was wearing a casing, that is, a mask. I tried not to breathe on him.”

After a positive test, Igor began to observe quarantine honestly. Food was brought to him by the neighbors under the door. Now he has already two fresh negative tests, and from April 9 he can go out.

Igor says that although he is already healthy, I don’t want to get infected a second time.

“I don’t know, you can probably grab it a second time. Then, no one knows the consequences of this matter. I went out for a walk with my dog ​​and it became very bad. This state of weakness is unusual - I walk with an uncertain step,” says Igor.

The music school where he worked is closed. The authorities could not decide what to do with students during quarantine - some were for distance learning, others were against. He himself has no idea how to teach music remotely, and so he told his students: “Guys, wait. When they open it, I’ll pay off all the debts.”

But he even has a plan for what to do if the school is closed.

“We’ll have to go play in transition, like in the 90s. This is not the worst thing: it’s fun, you communicate with people,” jokes Igor.

“I was released on bail. Everything else is on my conscience."

37-year-old oncologist Anton Usov works in a private hospital near Moscow.

This clinic is for wealthy patients: an ambulance call costs 22 thousand rubles ($300), a blood group test costs 3000 rubles ($40), an intensive care unit costs 50 thousand per day ($680).

In mid-March, a pensioner was admitted to the hospital in serious condition, who was immediately connected to a ventilator; his son, who had recently returned from France, often came to inquire about his health. As Anton’s colleagues recall, the man knew that he had to comply with quarantine, but he explained to the doctors this way: “And I have quarantine: a store and a hospital.” His wife and mother were sick at home at the time with severe flu symptoms. He came to the hospital without a mask; visitors were allowed in at any time.

Fines and arrests violating self-isolation were not yet threatened.

“Everything was clear to us even without tests,” recalls Anton. “I knew I would get sick, it was just a matter of time.” He and his wife sent their schoolchildren to friends in the village and began to wait.

One day in the evening, the doctor had a fever, a cough. On March 30, on Saturday, Anton, who was rarely ill, had a fever of up to 39,5 degrees. When it became difficult to breathe, he called an ambulance.

On Sunday morning, the oncologist was already in the intensive care unit of the infectious diseases hospital on a ventilator. There were 10 other people with him, all with suspected coronavirus.

Anton says that lying under the ventilator is not so scary, although he had not had to do this before.

“Well, I know how this happens, I know that it’s not so scary,” the oncologist recalls.

Anton was diagnosed with bilateral pneumonia of viral origin. After four days in intensive care, he was transferred to a separate room.

“The oxygen content in the blood drops sharply, the lungs cannot cope,” he explains how the disease progresses. “There is a lot of intoxication in the blood, it’s a serious virus.” The whole body aches constantly, a very unpleasant condition.”

The temperature at the doctor lasted more than a week. A positive coronavirus test came only on the seventh day of illness.

At the hospital, Anton read and slept. It was impossible to leave the ward; the doctor came once a day.

“It added to the experience. For example, it was clear that my lungs had started to clear up after a repeat CT scan, but I only found out about this three days later. Two days of nerves,” recalls Anton.

He was released on April 7 against a receipt that he would not communicate with anyone.

“In theory, I should be under surveillance. Before being discharged, they had to put a program on my phone to determine my geographic location and take a photo so that the cameras would recognize me on the streets of the city. They didn't do any of this. The paper was filled out and that was it. A bit of a formal attitude towards work, of course. Then everything is on my conscience. If I want, I walk around the city; if I want, I don’t,” says the oncologist.

He will do repeated tests for Covid-19 himself next week: “The virus is cleared from the body in about two weeks; while you are positive, you cannot be socially active.” The second time, the doctor laughs, you can either get infected or you can’t.

“There are many different strains of coronavirus in the world now. Chinese and European are biochemically different. There is not yet enough data on reinfection. But I’m not afraid, I wasn’t afraid of getting sick the first time either. I understood that this would happen one way or another. This virus is too contagious - that is, it is very easily transmitted - and we do not have any immunity. Everyone, young and old, will get it, now or later. The point of quarantine is so that not everyone is in a crowd, so that there is enough mechanical ventilation for all those who are seriously ill,” explains the oncologist.

The oncologist’s wife also became infected, but she tolerates the coronavirus more easily and is being treated at home. Usov did not lose his position at the clinic, but lost most of his salary, spending almost a month on sick leave. As soon as he receives two negative tests, he will go to the hospital to see patients.

“To be honest, I really want to go to work,” the doctor smiles.

“Imagine, I do the cleaning myself.”

On February 23, 2020, the husband of pianist Basinia Shulman flew to Moscow from Bergamo. Amateur footballer David Berov was on the same flight with him; on March 2, he became the first Russian patient to be diagnosed with coronavirus.

On the same day, two ambulance doctors in protective overalls, masks and glasses entered the apartment of Basinia.

“I was surprised, we were all asleep. We were told that my husband was flying with an infected person and we all need to go into quarantine until March 7 - exactly two weeks from February 23, after the conditional contact. We signed papers that we had no right to leave the apartment. My husband, me and my son were tested for coronavirus, they turned out to be negative. That is, we were healthy, the smears were negative, so on March 7, the quarantine ended, and we healed as usual,” says Shulman.

She returned to rehearsals with the 150-person film orchestra. According to her, she went to play as protected as possible: “My friends laughed at me. It seems to me that I am the most disciplined person of all my friends, who, fortunately, did not get sick. I wore gloves, a mask and glasses.”

On March 21, Basinia organized an online concert “Music against coronavirus.”

“There were musicians from five countries there - for example, a saxophonist from Italy, who had been in isolation for a month by that time. My friend from France played - also in quarantine. You see, all the musicians suddenly lost their jobs. Almost no one has airbags with a few exceptions. In addition to earning money, people have lost the opportunity to express themselves creatively, and this is also important. That concert was watched by 2 thousand people, which is more than in the Great Hall of the Conservatory,” Shulman is proud.

Three days later, she herself became ill with a coronavirus.

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“My temperature rose very suddenly, to 38. Then my whole body began to ache. All this happened in 2 hours. No more symptoms - no cough, no runny nose.

Shulman was treated by an infectious disease specialist at Madina Andean First City Hospital.

“When it hit me, I wrote to her on WhatsApp. Madina is an amazing doctor, low regards to her, she pulled us out. On March 25, she sent a therapist to us, nurses in protective suits came to us, and again, as after Berov, they took tests for coronavirus, which this time showed a positive result,” says the pianist.

She didn't panic. According to Shulman’s recollections, in that state she had no thoughts at all: “You are overcome by terrible weakness and sleep. I slept for twenty hours."

Andean has developed an individual treatment plan for Shulman: drink plenty of hot water and monitor breathing.

“You are lying down and cannot get up, this disease consumes all your strength. For the first five days I lay alone in a room behind closed doors. My husband and son put five-liter bottles of water under the door; in my bedroom there is a thermos with a five-liter dispenser. I crawled to the door, somehow poured a five-liter bottle into the thermopot, then somehow poured myself some water. They also placed honey, lemon and ginger at my door - when I had the strength, I added this to my drink,” explains Shulman.

She monitored her breathing and quickly realized that she breathed best when she slept on her stomach. Five days later, the fever subsided, but on the same day her husband and son fell ill. Now she and her twenty-year-old son were placing five-liter bottles under the door of her husband’s room. His illness followed the same scenario - aches in all muscles and high fever. The son, says Basinia, had the easiest time with the disease - a temperature of 37,3 degrees for several days and a superficial cough.

“Thank God, none of us had pneumonia or breathing problems. We were allowed to be treated at home because we were considered relatively mildly ill. And we were very lucky that we were easy,” she adds.

Shulman’s repeat test was negative, but until the test is repeated, the entire family is living in quarantine. According to Basinia, previously for many years all the housework was done by her assistant, who now cannot come to them. The food is prepared by her son, a food blogger, and the garbage is collected from the door by a cleaning lady who washes the common guarded entrance. An assistant puts food at the door once a week.

“Imagine, I do the cleaning myself,” says Basinia. “I remembered what I did many years ago - I vacuum, wipe the dust, and clean up. Full program. This, of course, is when the strength appeared, because for ten days there was no strength at all.”

Four Moscow concerts have been postponed until October, foreign tours have been cancelled, Shulman is not making plans for the future: “I am an absolutely real person, but I am sure that the Universe wants to tell me something. You see how it turns out - I fell under this twice, it means something. Well, my husband was flying on the plane, well, he wasn’t hit, although it could have been, but it hit us all a second time. What can you plan here?!”

“Calculate immediately for a month. It’s better to sit out at home than spend the same time in the hospital with a blue bottom from injections.”

February 27, Vladimir Chernyadiev removed the last tooth of wisdom.

While there was an open wound in its place, the 34-year-old photographer took painkillers and refused antibiotics prescribed by the dentist: “When the previous three teeth were removed, I did without them, and now I’ve decided not to eat them again. Probably, if I had taken antibiotics, then I wouldn’t have had pneumonia... Those pills are exactly what they use to treat it. But since I love self-medication..."

Vladimir was working and meeting with friends who had recently returned from Italy. He usually traveled around the city a lot: “I’m a photographer, I have so many work meetings all the time, I could communicate with a thousand people.” While the tooth hurt, I stayed at home more. Soon I noticed a rapid pulse and a slight fever.

Then the cough started: “Well, coughing and coughing, as usual, I often suffered from bronchitis, I didn’t even pay attention.” As a result, the cough turned into choking: “I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t finish the sentence.” But Chernyadyev still didn’t go to the doctor: “I generally try not to go to doctors. I have a treatment system like in Britain, where they advise taking paracetamol for all complaints,” Vladimir laughs.

On the night of March 16, when a fever was added to the poorly tolerated cough, the photographer nevertheless decided to go to the ambulance. The paramedic listened to the patient’s breathing and said: “Get ready, you suspect pneumonia.”

For the first time in his life, Vladimir went to the hospital - and immediately to the infectious diseases ward. The photographer remembers the line of ambulances that stood outside the emergency room that night, and the clean linen in the box - fresh, like in a hotel.

Doctors took tests for coronavirus. No one expected positive results: they did not pay attention to the announced pandemic, only chaos in Italy showed in the news, and in Russia Covid-19 was considered a rarity. An X-ray showed blackouts in Chernyadiev’s lungs, and the photographer was sent to a ward for six people, where 10 patients were replaced over the next five days.

“One had a sore throat, others had pneumonia, everyone was coughing and had a fever. Everyone was equally contagious; we couldn’t catch anything else there. Except for the coronavirus, as it turns out. Well, and also scabies, which one guy himself didn’t know about,” said the photographer.

At first they treated me for ordinary pneumonia: they prescribed antibiotics, cough medicines, inhalations, which did not work: “As it turned out, in the case of my pneumonia it was better not to do them.”

The first test for Covid-19 was negative, and the doctors relaxed. The second, taken the morning after hospitalization, arrived 5 days later: it was sent to the Novosibirsk Vector laboratory.

When Covid was confirmed there, Vladimir already felt almost recovered.

“I wasn't scared. I knew from how I felt that it couldn’t get any worse. On the third day in the hospital, all flu symptoms disappeared. The temperature dropped, the sense of smell and taste returned,” says Vladimir.

Chernyadiev was transferred to a separate box, with his own bathroom and toilet.

“The course was mild, there was no compression in the chest, as described. I thought I would wait three more days and go home. And after the positive test, they left me for another week. I'm upset, damn it, sitting here again. I’m losing my job, orders... There was no quarantine yet, and I thought I had a job,” says the photographer.

Along the way, it turned out that he had not infected anyone in the common room: no virus was found in any of the neighbors, says Vladimir. The wife, who lives with him, cost a mild runny nose and a negative test. Like friends who traveled to Italy.

“As I understand it, there are super-spreaders who can infect 1000 people in a day while moving around the city, and there are people like me who get sick, but do not transmit the virus,” the photographer suggests.

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For two weeks, Vladimir took antibiotics and did oxygen inhalations: “Very useful things. With them, as I understand, everything goes easier, without mechanical ventilation.” I read my beloved Mark Twain. Meditated: looked at the ceiling. I photographed the food. I was surprised by the rumors and fake news about coronavirus on the Internet: “At first I told doctors the horror stories that were circulating on the internet, about quartz lamps and so on. They laughed and said, this simply couldn’t happen physically. And when I read that in Britain they started burning 5G towers like witches because they thought that the virus was transmitted through them, I finally realized that the Middle Ages had returned.”

Before his discharge, Chernyadiev noted that the situation in the hospital was getting worse.

“There began a wave of seriously ill patients who were immediately put on mechanical ventilation. If they pulled me out with one antibiotic, then they need two at once, then a difficult period of recovery from the drugs. Doctors constantly said that the only means of prevention is to stay at home,” says Vladimir.

Like many who have recovered from the disease, Vladimir was amazed at the number of people denying the epidemic: “If you are walking and hoping for a mild course, count on a month straight away. It’s better to just sit out at home than to sit in the hospital for the same time with a blue bottom from injections. Believe me."

After three negative tests for the virus and a CT scan, the photographer was sent home. On March 29, having arrived home from the hospital in a car sharing, the first thing Vladimir asked on Facebook was: “Dear legislators! I have a pressing question! What should those who have already had Covid-19 do? The doctors at my hospital say you can no longer be a carrier or get reinfected.”

He still has to observe quarantine: “I left before the crisis and the mortgages burst, but I arrived...” Seven of his acquaintances from the fashion industry left their rented apartments and went to their hometowns in the regions.

The producer wife also lost most of her orders. “I’m lucky, usually everyone takes pictures of people, and I photograph objects. They are already bringing me all sorts of things by couriers, and I am slowly starting to take them off. Someone once told me a long time ago: “Why do you need to do what everyone else is doing?” I'm glad I followed this advice."

“I walk slowly from the bedroom to the toilet, and somewhere in between I have to sit down.”

In October 2019, Maria Mukhina went to Germany to study as a film producer for one of the cultural programs of the European Union.

According to her, she got into a group of 18 young specialists after several interviews and became the first Russian participant in this program in almost 20 years.

The group studied at various film schools in Stuttgart, Paris and London, Maria flew a lot, the courses were supposed to end in September 2020 with a film.

But in March, curators announced to students that due to the coronavirus pandemic, all universities were closed, studies were stopped, and the dormitory had to be vacated.

“Go to a place where you will feel calm,” the students were advised. Mukhina began to get ready to go home to Moscow. Her things did not fit into two suitcases; she had to go into town to get a third one.

It was March 14th, it was the third day that the world announced the coronavirus pandemic. Museums, theaters and universities have already closed.

“I was shocked because in Stuttgart everyone was just hanging out. People were shopping, they were milling around the shops and drinking prosecco, as they usually do on weekends. And I, with the sanitizer already on my nerves, grabbed the first suitcase I saw and ran further to get ready,” says Maria.

Maria traveled to Moscow via Stuttgart and Helsinki, changing her ticket twice: “I freaked out, and on the 16th I had a fever, but I decided that it was a neurosis.”

On the evening of March 17, she landed in Moscow and immediately approached the doctors on duty at the terminal with the words: “Please take my test.” I filled out the form, took a smear, went home by taxi and went into self-isolation.

“For two days I felt wonderful. I sorted out my things, started the laundry, and only on the third day I noticed snot and a slight cough. I decided that I had caught ARVI - I usually always get sick like this.”

The cough intensified, Maria gargled. They did not call from Rospotrebnadzor, but on March 22 the doorbell rang. Doctors in protective suits reported a positive result at Covid-19 and took Mukhina to Kommunarka.

Fond of running and yoga, Mary never lay in the hospital. She did not have time to wonder at the local order: on Sunday she became much worse, on Monday, doctors diagnosed her with bilateral pneumonia and began to treat with shock doses of antibiotics.

“It was so bad that I didn’t care about anything else. I, of course, was glad that this was a new, clean hospital and that I was alone in the room, food five times a day, an IV drip three times a day, they took my temperature several times a day... But the fever and cough were such that it seemed to me that I have a piece of meat, not a throat,” recalls Maria.

Mukhina was changed antibiotics several times, she took an antifungal medicine, and for the second week, doctors added an antiviral drug.

The symptoms disappeared, she was already being prepared for discharge, when suddenly the temperature rose again, her head hurt, she became sick, and Mary was almost unconscious. The next day, she could neither eat nor drink. It turned out to be intoxication with an antiviral drug.

Mukhina’s all drugs were canceled by putting under a dropper with saline and vitamin C. At this time, the first negative tests for Covid-19 came. She spent 15 days in the hospital.

In almost four weeks of quarantine, Mukhina saw only doctors and one courier. I saw my parents from the window of the ward at the hospital checkpoint, when they handed things to the guard. She also sees them now, after discharge: she speaks on the phone while they are standing under the window of her apartment on the third floor.

The main consequences of the disease are weakness and lethargy for at least a month, doctors warned Mukhina.

“I cooked breakfast today and I’m already tired, I want to go back to bed. Taking a shower now feels like running 10 kilometers. Every morning is very difficult. No matter how slowly I get up, I still feel very weak and my eyes turn black. I walk slowly from the bedroom to the toilet, and somewhere in between I have to sit down so that the blackness goes away and the dizziness stops. I sway for two hours to at least somehow look like a person,” says Maria.

Despite this, Mukhina has already returned to classes on the European program for film producers: while she was sick, her studies were transferred to the online format. Maria also gives a lot of interviews and will be involved in blood donation to work with antibodies that are produced in patients who have been ill.

“Somehow my civic position took over,” she explains. “It’s as if our people don’t have enough of the example of Europe, where everything went wrong. I decided to do everything to the maximum and tell more. True, I don’t have enough strength,” says Maria.

In the hospital, Mukhina wrote about her illness on Facebook and Instagram - and under each post she collected dozens of comments that she actually did not have coronavirus, she was suffering from a common ARVI, and in general she was an actor hired by the authorities.

They also criticized that she came to be treated at the expense of the budget of the Russian Federation, and while she was healthy, she was sitting abroad.

“It infuriates me,” says Mukhina. — I actually went to study because I was able to get in and because I want to make our Russian cinema better. Both my parents and I paid taxes here all the time, and the last time I was at the district clinic was about seven years ago. Yes, now I’m in the hospital. What kind of claims are these anyway?”

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