Mbuthia: I’m woken up at 3am to swallow cocktail of drugs 

Not so much unlike HIV, doctors seem to focus a lot on the infections that actually lead to the testing for coronavirus.

Since there's also a lot of literature by now about the disease, it's clear that it affects different people differently. 

What is however known is that the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions are more at threat. And that is where my case fell: Severe.

Mine was severe, I guess because of a pre-existing condition and also that I did not go to the hospital in good time. A lot of time was wasted while I still nursed what I thought was a common cold.

My wife also tested positive and so did my eldest son Jude, who was mainly driving us around.

Their PCR tests were also taken at Coptic Hospital on Ngong Road. But their cases proved different from mine because they were both asymptomatic.

My two other children— daughter, 24, and son, 22, tested negative. Now we knew the extent of Covid in the household with three-fifths down.

Protocols had to be rethought and implemented, splitting the three-bedrooms, living room and SQ among everyone except me.

There is no current licensed or prescribed medicine to cure Covid-19. And most of us do not have the luxury of getting what the outgoing US president Donald Trump received at Walter Reed Hospital when he tested positive.

A cocktail of mainly experimental drugs were used including Redemsivir, Dexamethasone, Regeneron, Famotidine, Melatonin and others according to his lead doctor Sean Conley.

Some of them are still undergoing clinical trials and therefore not available to the general public even in the US, but in Kenyan hospitals, at least at KU, Dexamethasone seems to be the drug of choice coupled with Teviamet, Amoxyclav, Zinc, multi vitamins and a smattering of chlorohexidine mouthwash.

Drugs prescribed

Dexamethasone is a steroid recommended for hospitalised patients who need oxygen or are on ventilators.

According to Maia Anderson in "Hospital Review," a study released in June, Dexamethasone reduced deaths by one-third for those who had been sick for more than a week and were on mechanical ventilators, but had no impact on patients receiving no respiratory support.

The drug, according to the study, is typically given to patients with severe Covid-19 to prevent an immune system overreaction.

Some experts have called it a "major breakthrough" for Covid-19 treatment, as it was the first drug shown to improve survival rates.

It is then no wonder that Kenyan hospitals are using it among first line drugs to combat the pandemic. The controversial hydroxychloroquine does not feature. Some of these drugs used at the KU facility address specific diseases— from diabetes, pneumonia to inflammations in the mouth.

With the bronchopneumonia, laboured breathing and the high random sugar reading I was admitted with, focus was on a multi-pronged attack.

Most times, you are woken up at 3am to swallow 6-7 pills at a go (who decreed that medicine should be taken at such ungodly hours?), have your random sugar taken, and readings for other vitals.

The first line of drugs prescribed for me at Coptic Hospital included Cotipred, Zithromax and Cipladon 1000.

Tomorrow:How I have survived in this hospital ‘prison’