Testimony of Uzice man who had coronavirus: "It's not a disease, it's a tornado ravaging your body"

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Mico Despotovic, 64, who tested positive for coronavirus in mid-March after returning to Serbia from Konjic, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, says that after seven days of hell and hallucinations, his fever was suddenly gone, as if someone turned off the switch.

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This Uzice man was cured and returned home two days ago. He assumes that he was infected with the dangerous virus on March 11 when he attended a celebration in Konjic, where, as he says, people coming from five continents had gathered...

"I went through hell! It's not a disease, it's a tornado that goes through your body! I just remember the incredible powerlessness of the organism, some delirium I was in - you sleep, yet you don't sleep, you wake up in a nightmare, you hallucinate, you're constantly in a state of daze, and it was like that for seven days. At one point, I felt as if my teeth had turned upside down," Despotovic tells his story to the daily Kurir.

"It's possible that the fateful moment was when I patted one colleague, the director of a company, on the back... Later I heard that man had been infected when he came to Konjic, but because of his milder clinical picture he healed from coronavirus under home isolation," says Despotovic.

He returned from Konjic the same evening, there were no problems in the following days, he was working, meeting with people - then, three or four days later, he felt, as he says, chills in his legs, and just thought - "here it is."

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"I phoned the call center, they told me they would test me the next day, that happened, and they sent me back home to wait for the results. The next day, they called me and told me I had to go to Belgrade. Movie-like scenes followed, an incredible ride to Belgrade in an ambulance, we were driving more on the left than on the right side of the road, all the time under flashing lights and sirens. The first night I spent at the Infectious Diseases Clinic, it was a difficult night for me, with all the severe patients around me. Then they transferred me to the Clinical-Hospital Center "Dragisa Misovic," Despotovic says.

For the first three days in this clinic, everything was fine, with no fever or other symptoms, and then, all of a sudden, hell started.

"I was on oxygen all the time, at one point my saturation dropped below 90, they wanted to transfer me to semi-intensive care. If this happened, if they put me on machines, I probably would not have survived... I asked the doctor to have my saturation test done in half an hour, during that time I walked down the hall, did some exercises, started my lungs going a little and in half an hour the saturation was 98. It was, literally, a struggle with myself, I had to beat myself, to convince myself that I could, that I had to get over it. After seven days of hell, hallucinations, a real tornado in the body, the temperature suddenly stopped, as if someone turned off the switch," Despotovic says.

In the end, he added, the most important thing for him was that none of the people he had been in contact with got sick and that no one had to go through what he went through. He says he  feels huge gratitude toward the doctors, nurses, and other staff from the "Dragisa Misovic" clinic, and Dr. Marija from the Uzice Public Health Institute, who called in every day to check on him...

During the nearly one month he spent at the hospital, he saw some distressing scenes.

"One time an entire family arrived, the father was sick, the mother was sick, a baby of two months was sick, a girl of five had tested negative for the virus, but she was also brought to the hospital... The girl was sitting next to the baby... These were very distressing scenes," Despotovic says.

(Telegraf.rs)