Young coronavirus survivor reveals how she wakes up at 4am to brush her teeth as she can still TASTE the virus weeks after becoming infected with the deadly illness
- Trina Dinh, 26, was placed in an induced coma after falling sick with COVID-19
- Days later she woke in ICU and credits doctors and nurses with saving her life
- Two weeks later she is still COVID-19 positive and suffers terrible symptoms
A young coronavirus survivor has revealed she is still suffering serious effects from the virus weeks later.
Tina Dinh fell ill on Sunday, July 26 and was rushed to hospital by ambulance three days later, after her headaches, chills, nausea and fever became overwhelming.
The 26-year-old spent over a week in the Intensive Care Unit struggling to breathe and struggling for survival.
With the help of a team of doctors and nurses Ms Dinh eventually recovered and was even released from hospital last week.
However, some horrible side-effects still linger, she told The Herald Sun.
‘I have COVID taste in my mouth — it has a metallic taste and it just doesn’t go away. I even woke up at 4am this morning just to brush my teeth because I couldn’t deal with it.’
Tina Dinh, 26, has described waking up on a ventilator in a terrifying tale of surviving COVID-19
Ms Dinh said it was a terrifying experience to be breathing normally, and then have everything change so quickly
Her case has been linked to the Bertocchi Smallgoods cluster where her mother works as a casual employee and has also tested positive for coronavirus.
Ms Dinh described losing her sense of smell and taste and being plagued by constant chills before she was rushed to Footscray Hospital in Melbourne.
After improving overnight she was sent home but the virus continued attacking her system and paramedics were called to return her to the hospital.
She said her relapse happened very quickly and paramedics arrived in the nick of time after her oxygen levels plunged to a dangerous 84 per cent.
‘I can’t even describe it. It is the most terrifying feeling because you don’t understand why. You are trying to do everything you can with your mouth and your nose, you are trying to gasp in the air, but nothing is going in. It is like suffocating.’
COVID-19 is understood to affect the ability of the respiratory system to supply the bloodstream with oxygen.
She contracted the virus from her parents after an outbreak spread among workers on July 17 at the Bertocchi Smallgoods factory (pictured) in Melbourne’s northern suburbs
Ms Dinh was placed in an induced coma and put on a ventilator by a team of 10 specialists.
Four days later she awoke to to find herself sealed in a plastic bubble in the intensive care unit with every part of her body marked from tests and injections.
She credited the doctors and nurses with saving her life but also learned her father was in his own serious battle with the virus and had been placed on life support.
She said lying in hospital looking through her phone and seeing news of people protesting the lockdowns made her furious.
She has now been home from hospital for a week but is still positive for COVID-19 and has pneumonia with doctors telling her it will take months to recover.
But she realises she is fortunate with the news on Friday that a Melbourne man in his 20s died from the virus.
Despite her weak strength, she says she cannot walk or even sit up for long on her own, her focus is now on her father’s recovery.
She said both her and her mother speaks to him over video each day and the nurses have told them he hears them and is desperately trying to respond.
He will be woken and the ventilator removed in the next few days with the family hoping he will make a recovery.
Hospital staff in personal protective equipment wheel a patient into the isolation ward who is suspected of having COVID-19