Tun

Gender: Male
Ethnicity: Malaysian
Background: Tun is 48 years old and is Malaysian. He is married, with two children, and works as a surgeon. Tun tested positive for Covid after treating a Covid-positive patient. While Tun’s colleague recovered quickly, he was admitted to intensive care when his symptoms became more severe. He found intensive care a traumatic and lonely experience.

Tun thought he had Covid when he experienced bad flu-like symptoms in March 2020, but was diagnosed after being exposed to a Covid-positive patient towards the end of the month. While Tun’s colleague, who was exposed at the same time, was able to return to work after seven days, Tun continued to experience a high fever, coughing, and feeling lethargic. After intense coughing which made him feel nauseous, Tun phoned NHS 111 and was admitted to hospital.

After two days of having his symptoms treated, Tun was discharged from hospital and drove to his other residence to self-isolate. When Tun spoke to his wife on the phone she became concerned and called an ambulance which took Tun to hospital. Tun was assessed in hospital and sent to intensive care, where he was treated for three weeks.

Despite being a doctor and knowing what to expec, Tun found being in intensive care a traumati experience and very alie. He felt so dependent on the healthcare worker but was grateful that everyone was trying to facilitate [his] recover. Tun found that little thingsreally cheered [him] u and made the lonely experienc more bearable. Tun has also found it quite therapeutic just speaking to other patients going through i.

Tun’s wife and children found his admission to intensive care distressing. After being discharged, Tun isolated from his children for the first night but then stopped.

Tun hasn’t been vaccinated yet because he is taking part in a clinical trial. Tun has expressed interest in receiving the vaccine and intends to be vaccinated after the end of the trial once his antibody levels have fallen.

Tun is a surgeon and felt unprotected by inadequate PPE.

Age at interview 48

I think from just following the guidelines back then in terms of the personal protection of PPE, but I’ve been advised by my other colleagues that, you know, we are that we’re not really being provided enough or optimum PPE compared to the WHO guideline and back then it was just a simple face mask and a plastic apron and I kind of followed that precaution and also attended the training sessions in terms of what to do and how to wear the equipment and how to tick them off and from, in terms of what I tend to do differently is perhaps because I was leading the ward round, I was trying to minimise patient contact to my other colleagues so I tried to be, you know, be the only one who is in contact with patients and my other junior colleagues who did not need to be there, I kind of, you know, make sure that they are not with me when I see the patients but they’re more at a distance in terms of recording the outcome of the ward interaction with the patients so I did all the precautions. Having said that, even before I went to my on call my other colleagues from a different hospital mentioned that I should be wearing the FFP3 mask, which is the, you know, the highest protection but at, at that stage that wasn’t really the recommendation and I just continued with the normal face mask.

Embed Print Transcript

Tun’s faith helped him to recover a positive outlook on life.

Age at interview 48

So I think it does help, you know, faith does help to for you to, you know, try and recover for it to have a positive outlook in life and otherwise if yeah then it’s just a bit more difficult because I think faith makes you understand why things happen and you just have to be strong and get on with life.

Embed Print Transcript