Johannesburg - While many South African, young and old, have lost their lives to the Covid-19 pandemic which started spreading like wildfire here around March 2020, 90-year-old Gogo Zodwa Ivy Dladla, is one of the few lucky elderly persons who beat the odds and lived to tell her story.
Dladla, who is a diabetic, sat comfortably on a couch in her Tladi home, Soweto during this interview. She didn’t display any long-term Covid symptoms such as fatigue, which many people are said to suffer from, weeks or even months after they had been treated for the virus.
She tells the Sunday Independent about how she beat the odds to be counted among the fortunate millions who have survived the pandemic not only in South Africa but worldwide.
Gogo’s battle with the disease began on December 26, 2020, after her grandchildren threw a celebratory 90th birthday party. A few days afterwards, she started feeling feverish and one night she suffered chest pains and couldn’t breathe properly.
One of her daughters living with her started monitoring her condition and noticed that she was not getting any better. Arrangements were made to get the elderly woman to hospital for medical treatment. She was taken to Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital.
“I live with one of my daughters, and at the beginning of January this year, one morning she could see I was not well. I felt feverish, I felt cold and I couldn’t sleep well. She then called my eldest daughter and son-in-law to drive me to the hospital. I was taken to Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital.
“I didn’t know what was going on with me until the nurse in charge told me I had tested positive for Covid-19. The nurse told me the ward I was in was not for anyone else, but for Covid-19 patients. It was also revealed to me that I was diabetic. In my entire life, I had never been diagnosed with diabetes, but here I was in this hospital, now told that I am diabetic as well,” she said.
Gogo says her only ailment before Covid-19 struck was arthritis which made her sickly around the cold seasons.
“I suffer a lot from arthritis. The minute I become exposed to harshly cold conditions, I react terribly to it. I remember while in hospital being treated for Covid, bleeding from my nose and it was difficult to breathe. I stayed at Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital for fourteen days. I was then taken to Nasrec Field Hospital on the 16th of January and I was discharged on the first of February,” said Dladla.
Recalling her journey of dealing with Covid-19, she said: “I was admitted with many patients younger than me who contracted the coronavirus, and unfortunately, they lost their lives. I am so blessed to be alive. I thank God for getting me through this deadly virus. I saw many people who were severely ill. I survived by the grace of God”
It has been three months since Dladla was discharged from Nasere and she has had no other complications.
The widowed mother of five, whose son Barney Molokoane is one of the struggle heroes who left South Africa in his teens to join the armed struggle in exile, has always been strong and healthy. She said she had never experienced any difficulties regarding her health.
Her message for people facing and dealing with Covid-19 is that a positive attitude is important to keep one’s head up.
“Do not be afraid. Do not despair. Keep on fighting, have that positive attitude, and pray,” she advised. “And get out of bed. Don’t stay in bed all the time. And I want to say to them, ‘If I did it, you can do it.’ ”
“In the hospital, they called me a miracle,” she recalled and earned recognition and an award. from the doctors who helped her with the fight in dealing with the pandemic.
Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) Guy Richards said not every patient (including elderly patients) actually develops a severe or critical illness after contracting Covid-19.
“Many of those patients will remain at home, and may be either asymptomatic or have relatively mild disease. Of those who are admitted to hospital, the mortality goes up quite significantly.”
He added that 80% of patients with Covid-19 admitted to hospital don’t need to be put on life support (a ventilator).
“This is because we can correct their oxygen by giving it to them in a different way, such as a nasal cannula – a small tube that fits into each nostril – or via a face mask. This method has a low flow rate and is much more accessible and less invasive than a ventilator.
“Most patients with Covid-19 can be managed with oxygen, anticoagulation therapy (drugs that prevent blood clots), and by placing them in the prone position (lying flat on their stomach). Placing patients in the prone position early can prevent the need for a ventilator and shorten the length of ICU stay,” he said.
Richards said there are different modalities of therapy for Covid-19 patients such as mechanical ventilation and being on high-flow nasal oxygen. He advises patients who’ve recovered from Covid-19 to get vaccinated.
“It will give a boost to respond from an immunity point of view. Older people do not develop a potent immune response to the infection or the vaccination. If she now gets vaccinated, as well as having had the disease, then she is more likely to be protected in the future,” he said.
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