Rajkot: After brush with death, doctor beats Covid and gets back on track

RAJKOT: In her war against coronavirus, 37-year-old frontline warrior Dr Meghavi Bhapal in Rajkot Civil Hospital for the first time in nine years of duty was afraid — for her own life.
Bhapal, an MD in medicine and a mother of two children, got diagnosed as Rajkot’s first Covid positive case after she returned home from her 10-day deputation to Ahmedabad Civil Hospital. In Rajkot, she had been serving at the Covid ward but she saw the contagion in its ugly form at Ahmedabad’s Covid emergency ward when she attended to patients between June 1 and 10.
"Most serious Covid patients were coming to the civil hospital there directly in the third stage which is called ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome). There was heavy viral load," said the doc who returned home on June 10 and the very next day tested positive herself. She got admitted in her own hospital where she had been serving for so long.
"I had a very low heart rate which is a very rare complication of coronavirus itself. The cardiologist opined that there is no cardiac related problem but virus load was there which affected my heart and vagus nerve," said Bhapal, who was afraid that she may never see her two children eight-year old Stuti and three-year-old Saurya again.
After 12 days of hospitalization, she came home on June 23 and post full recovery she resumed duty in the Covid ward again from Monday.
Bhapal’s husband, Dr Suketu, is an ophthalmologist who does private practice in Rajkot, while both her parents-in-law are doctors.
"When you get admitted as a patient in hospital being a doctor you feel that pain and your mental status. I was first afraid in the hospital where I had served for nine years. I had only fear that if I will die what will happen to my kids," recounted Bhapal, who met her children after 23 days.