COVID-19 survivor recalls fight with fever

Numbing fever, an inability to concentrate, depression, dizziness and a general sense of simply slipping away. These are some things that most COVID-19 patients experience, said Venkataraghava P K, a resident of Rajarajeshwari Nagar, who is the first coronavirus patient discharged in the city after a complete recovery.

Beset by the burning fever which ranged to 102.5 F early in the mornings during quarantine at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases (RGICD) in Jayanagar, Venkataraghava described those days as an ordeal.

“The mornings were the worst. I had to place a wet cloth on my head to control the temperature. The medical staff would introduce a paracetamol IV and the temperature would drop to 100.5 F for the rest of the day. But it would never break,” explained Venkataraghava, who added that the enduring fever sapped his strength and left him depressed.

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In the midst of such battles with the virus, the medical staff discovered that Venkataraghava’s sugar levels were spiking. “Once, it rose over 340. It was alarming,” the techie said. He said that Dr Deepak U G, the nodal officer in charge of the isolation facility, brought down the sugar levels with medication.

“I’m not a diabetic, but they were treating me like one. I had to take medicine three times a day. My sugar levels stabilised,” he said, adding that medical staff explained to him that spiking sugar levels is a result of viral fever.

Further, Venkataraghava began focusing on dealing with the fever. “It was the longest fever I have ever had -- it lasted 15 days. That fever kept grounding me down,” he said.

Although COVID-19 has no dedicated treatment, Minister of Medical Education Dr K Sudhakar explained that the government had developed a single protocol of care for the entire state. “This is basically a symptomatic treatment. We treat cases with Tamiflu, which we also used for H1N1. And it has proved effective. Most patients have recovered,” Dr. Sudhakar told DH.

Venkataraghava said he was being administered a variant of Tamiflu called StarFlu -- one 75mg dose in the morning and one in the evening. He said he was also being administered with a general antibiotic to prevent a secondary infection such as ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) or pneumonia, which causes fatalities in COVID-19 patients.

“Recovery is much harder if a patient slips into pneumonia. If that is prevented, the fever can be managed,” he revealed.