Experience with Covid-19

 


Dr. Ahmed Eltigani Sidahmed
Dr. Ahmed Eltigani Sidahmed


Senior Advisor with experience in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas with University of California-Davis (UCD) USDA, Winrock International, USAID, FAO, IFAD, EU, WB, the CGIAR, AU-IBAR, Pan African Parliament, AOAD and the Research and Communication Group Ltd. Advised, guided, evaluated, directed research programs, reviewed, and assessed programs and original publications investing in agriculture rural development, food security, nutrition, resilience, and poverty reduction in the mostly fragile and climate risk environments. Very active during the past ten years as FAO Investment Center (TCI) responsible for the development and validation of post CAADP compact agriculture investment plans. IFAD Senior Technical Livestock Adviser; ICARDA Director of KMD Research Program. Sidahmed was Associate Director for Partnership and Development at UCD and led or participated in quality control/enhancement and innovation mainstreaming related tasks of major organisations. Lead tasks in the development of African Livestock development and Health strategies, Assessment & Mitigation of COVID-19 on the Africa Livestock sector. Sidahmed is currently Principle Senior Adviser to the Prime Minster Working Group supporting Sudan Agriculture Transformation. He published extensively and presented invited keynote speeches and reports.

Email: ahmedsidahmed.contacts@gmail.com



My story with COVID-19

“Italy was one of the hardest hit during the early months of the pandemic with more than 100,000 deaths to extent that they had to bury the dead by the army in huge mass-graves. Italy turned out to being the best Public Health System in Europe and the world. Now out of 4.1 million cases 3.8 million recovered and life is returning back to normal but for a very disciplined organised society!!”

Ironically, I have spent more than half of 2020 in Helsinki city of Finland with my family. There I was also contracted by AU-IBAR to do a continental assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on the livestock sector of Africa. So, I was fully educated about the menace virus to the extent that I was one of the very rare who wore a mask in Helsinki. Shuttling back and forth between Rome and Helsinki I have done 10 PCR Antigenic COVID-19 tests between July 2020 and 8th January 2021. All negative. I was very disciplined: I wore daily a fresh mask, took with me all the defensive equipment (gloves, disinfectants, and extra masks). I was very careful! Then on the 25th of January I was devastated when my younger brother (a senior very well-known Architect in Dubai Emirates) suddenly died after I chatted with him through WhatsApp video on the 25th of January. He told me his COVID-19 test was positive for 9 days and that he is regularly being checked (every 2 days) and given all necessary treatments while being quarantined at his home. I went on the morning of the 26th to be tested for the virus in preparation for travelling to Dubai. The result that came same day in the evening was positive! I called my doctor who prescribed for me anti-inflammatory, Antibiotics and an Oxigenometer. I started coughing and having headache. but my doctor advised me to stay at home. By the 3rd day (morning of the 29th of January) I had fever, my oxygen level low and was suffering from extensive body ache (amplifying the pain that I already have being a chronic fibromyalgia (muscle ache) patient. I started to assure myself because I had been vaccinated three months earlier against chronic pneumonia and flue. Also, my diabetes was under control by taking daily Glucophage (Metformin) tablets. But the pain escalated, and my doctor advise by phone that I should not worry and stay at home. By 11AM I decided to call 118 COVID-19 emergency in the city of Rome. The ambulanaza (Ambulance) came in less than 15 minutes. Two fully masked nurses rushed upstairs to my apartment and took me down immediately. I had a very short time but was able to take a pair of change and my toiletry.

I was taken to one of the Major COVID-19 hospitals in Rome city (San Camilo Pulmonary Hospital Ospedale polmonare San Camilo).

Upon arrival at the hospital, I was put in a huge ward full of screaming and moaning patients. Then immediately I was taken to do tests (CAT Scan, ECG, X-rays). The results came in less than one hour and I was Informed that I need lots of treatments because of advanced age, my chronic Pneumonia, Asthma, and diabetes. They started pumping Intravenously considerable amounts of Cortisone (anti-inflammatory), Antibiotics, anticoagulant, and water and oxygen Two nights passed like this. The third morning they transferred me to a nearby smaller section. I spent there one night and witnessed the death of two patients. By midday a decision was made to take me in a yellow coffin (photo) to another more intensive area where each three patients share one room.

The fourth morning one of the three of us died. My need for heavier doses of oxygen increased and I started to feel an all-over pain and weakness. By the fifth day I was transferred to a smaller room of two and was kept there under close watch but with continuing IV infused medications as well as continuing blood sampling. By the 6th day I was transferred to an exclusive intensive care unit (ICU) where my head was kept inside a huge yellow oxygen bubble (Caschetto) - photo. There I stayed wired up by all monitoring equipment as much as possible and under the mercy of the oxygen, antibiotics, and cortisone medication.

Thirteen days passed while I was almost invalid. Issues such as tooth brushing, toilet and food were not at all possible. I had a small earphone attached to my iPhone that the nurses managed to connect to my ears inside the Caschetto, also they maintained the mobile internet connection and were so helpful that I was able to answer calls from my family members specially my 10 years old child… and during the rest of the time Quran verses poured into my ears giving me assurances and confidence in the rescue from Allah. Amazing how new technology is so helpful.

I was kept in the ICU for 13 days before being transferred to a less intensive care room with two others. One of them was recovering after being in the hospital for 56 days. By the mid fourth week I started eating and showering and learning to stand up and walk. I started to regain some of 10kg I lost. I was discharged after 34 days to home confinement. I tested twice negative (day 43 and day 62) and took the vaccine (one dose of AstraZeneca) on day 90! I still weak, a fresh mask every day, apply hygiene instructions attentively, and strictly to social distancing.

Dr Ahmed Eltigani SIDAHMED. Rome Italy. 21 May 2021


This is what I wrote and distributed electronically to my family and friends while still in the hospital:

Between death and life!!

This expression is about the condition of who he/she is about to suddenly disappear. This is what happens in COVID-19 isolation centers all over the world. I was a witness to what is happening in the city of Rome, Italy:
First, the death train comes and throws (the candidates) amid a huge number of patients in the emergency isolation wards! ... and this is a sight that the healthy or the patient cannot bear. They take you through several corridors and analysis centers before they return you to your bed. And if you are lucky, your neighbour will die minutes before your arrival. and you will witness what an unimaginable mind of a shattering screaming and a medical team striving to save lives .... Then you will be lucky and live until the morning. They carry you in a (yellow coffin. ...Photo) and you hear the congratulatory words. Yeah. Congratulations that you did not transfer to the morgue, but rather to another place where the transported have a chance for a day or two! And when your ears are pierced by shouting and crying, you know that you would shout very soon!!! But you live to be carried in another coffin to the intensive care unit! And you will know that this part of the Chest and Pneumonia Ward at the huge San Camilo Hospital has only two options: to end up by sending your corpse to the morgue at any moment when your extensively wired-up body stops responding and the results of dozens of blood tests show decisively negative results. Or the second option if you stay alive inside an oxygen bubble while all your data, especially the heart and chest, are subject to a reading and analysis centre without being interrupted!!! Hope comes back when they tell you that you have spent a week motionless inside the oxygen bubble and that you are on a way closer to the path of life .But you realize that you are on an upward and a downward road in which only the affectionate words of family and loved ones are seeping through the earphones of your mobile ... and you know at some point that you have not brushed your teeth, or shaved , or shampooed your hair for two weeks (the kind nurse takes care of inserting the tiny earphones in your ear until the recitations from Quran flow into your ears or the voice of your little boy vibrates with loving words). You discover that you are lucky, twelve days have passed while you are kept inside the oxygen bubble and you're still alive! Then a morning comes, and you notice a sign of hope when they tell you that you will need 50% oxygen instead of 100% .... and .... and ... and that your blood will receive anticoagulant for another month before you could be safe. You receive congratulations for changing the course of your journey from death to the other way around. For the first time after 4 weeks, you think of a cup of minted tea ... or the smell of tea served with burned milk in your Nubian village!
Dr Ahmed Eltigani SIDAHMED… Rome Italy. 20th February 2021


Photos of Dr Ahmed Eltigani Sidahmed
at the San Camilo Pulmonary Hospital Ospedale polmonare San Camilo, Rome, Italy
Dr Ahmed Eltigani Sidahmed
Dr Ahmed Eltigani Sidahmed Dr Ahmed Eltigani Sidahmed Dr Ahmed Eltigani Sidahmed
Dr Ahmed Eltigani Sidahmed Dr Ahmed Eltigani Sidahmed Dr Ahmed Eltigani Sidahmed