Kids author’ Michael Rosen reveals he was hours from dying from Covid-19 as he recovers from 7-week coma
KIDS’ author and poet Michael Rosen has revealed he came within hours of being killed by Covid-19.
The We’re Going on a Bear Hunt author, 74, spent seven weeks in a coma after falling ill in March.
He told the Today programme his last memory was being taken to hospital and added: “I don’t think I sensed that I was probably two hours off departing this planet.”
Asked how he was now, he told the Radio 4 show: “The first word to describe myself is feeble. It’s a reminder of how life is very impermanent.”
The writer explained that things started "moving very, very quickly" when a neighbour, who is a GP, did an "oxygen saturation test… and suddenly it was, 'You've got to go to A&E now'."
"I don't think I sensed, at that moment, that I was probably two or three hours off departing this planet.
"My respiratory system was conking out but so were my liver and kidneys and I didn't know that but found out afterwards."
"I think of them as cardboard tubes full of porridge. When I ask them to do things they don't do it. I've learnt how to walk with a stick and a bit without a stick.
"I can hear that my voice is a bit feeble as well and then I get tired very quickly.
"I've also lost some sight from my left eye and hearing from my left ear. So I feel a bit lopsided. Feeble and lopsided.
"I get these, not exactly nightmares, but recurring images… and I don't really want them there but I can't get rid of them."
"I didn't know about the seven weeks being in this induced coma until I came home and my wife Emma told me about it… I got quite upset about it…. That's full of emotion for me, that people were just hanging in there."
The writer will not be writing about the experience just yet, saying: "I usually allow these more traumatic things to sit about for a bit."
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