Dudley Johnson, 63, of Kenilworth, has made a full recovery from Covid-19 after spending the festive season fighting for his life.
Mr Johnson, his wife, Erika, and their adult daughter tested positive for Covid-19 at the end of November before the second wave began. But Mr Johnson was hardest hit because he has diabetes and hypertension and he had a kidney operation in 2017.
He was admitted to the Brackengate field hospital while his wife and daughter recovered in their homes.
Mr Johnson, who spends a lot of time at home, is still unsure how he caught the virus.
“I retraced my movement and whereabouts and remembered going out for breakfast, being the only occasion that I had been out of the safe haven of my home, and a week later, I tested positive,” he said.
Mr Johnson and his wife self-isolated in separate rooms at their home, but he made arrangements to go to hospital after having difficulty breathing.
Ms Johnson, 57, dropped her husband at Victoria Hospital, and he was taken by ambulance to Brackengate on Tuesday December 8.
“Every person I saw there as I entered looked like death; you could see the fear in their eyes,” he said.
Mr Johnson was put on high-flow nasal oxygen for over a week.
Ms Johnson said vitamins, fruit and vegetables, liquids and lots of sleep had aided her recovery but she had been worried all the while about her husband.
“It was a really scary time,” she said. “A lot of things go through your mind, like is he going to come home? It gets really depressing.”
Mr Johnson, who kept in daily contact with his family by video calling them on his cell phone, went on to make a full recovery, but he and his family are urging the public to take the virus seriously.
“I would have liked to sit on the beach and enjoy the waves, though I realised that I am not sitting on the beach enjoying a cocktail, I am sitting in a hospital, having oxygen, and many people out there don’t know what goes on in the hospitals,” he said.
“This is not a cold or flu virus where you can pop a pill and be cured. Fighting for recovery from a virus which attacks your lung functionality and renders you unable to transfer oxygen into your blood can be life threatening.”
While Mr Johnson made it home two days before Christmas, his wife said the festive season had been the last thing on her mind by then.
In the past they have spent Christmas with family but this time it was just the two of them.