A fit-and-healthy mother who filmed herself struggling to breathe as she warned of the dangers of coronavirus has said it felt like having ‘glass in her lungs’.
Tara Jane Langston, 39, told of how every breath is a ‘battle’ but she is now out of intensive care and recovering well.
The mother-of-two was rushed to hospital by ambulance last Friday and eventually diagnosed with Covid-19 on Sunday.
Ms Langston had filmed herself with her phone in the intensive care unit at Hillingdon Hospital in west London pleading with others to take the deadly COVID-19 seriously.
Gasping for breath and coughing, she made the harrowing video the following day and sent it as a Whatsapp message to her colleagues warning them to take care.
She had been unwell all of last week after initially being diagnosed with a chest infection and given antibiotics, which she took alongside ibuprofen and paracetamol.
Ms Langston, a waitress, now believes the ibuprofen may have exacerbated the virus, which kept her at Hillingdon Hospital in west London for the last week.
She said: ‘It’s like having glass in your lungs, it’s hard to explain, but every breath is a battle.
‘It’s absolutely horrible and I wouldn’t want to go through anything like this ever again. I’d been ill for about five days before I was taken to hospital in an ambulance.
‘I’d originally been diagnosed with a chest infection and given antibiotics and advised to take ibuprofen and paracetamol. I was taking about eight ibuprofen a day and they now think that that exacerbated the problem.
‘When I was taken into intensive care they originally planned to sedate me and keep me in intubation because my body had gone through it all for the best part of a week and I was shattered.
‘Fortunately I was kept awake but needed six litres of oxygen. Now that I’m improving I’m on one litre.’
Ms Langston is now recovering from her ordeal after catching the virus, which has infected 2,695 people and killed 137 in Britain alone.