'If I hadn’t dialled 999, who knows': Sandwell nurse on the mend after catching coronavirus
A Black Country nurse who is recovering after contracting coronavirus has urged people to seek medical help sooner if their health is deteriorating.
Charlene Nelson, aged 37, has been discharged from hospital and is now back home recovering after contracting the virus.
The mother-of-one, who underwent a kidney transplant in 2015, was able to fight off the disease after spending just under a week in hospital.
"If I hadn’t dialled 999, who knows what sort of condition I would be in now," she explained.
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"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."
Charlene works at Sandwell Hospital in Smethwick and was initially taken there for treatment having first suffered shortness of breath on April 12.
"I just couldn’t breathe," she said.
"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.
Cautious
"But I soon started responding to the treatment and began improving."
Charlene added: "I think there maybe people out there who think they don’t need to go to hospital or believe that their situation will worsen if they do go.
"However, my condition definitely improved.
"I would also strongly urge people to stay indoors to protect those who are most vulnerable in our society."
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 explained: "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."
