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He is 95 years old and this Friday he is back home, in a video conference with his 10 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren after recovering from a week in intensive care with coronavirus . Gertrude Fatton spent her hospital stay in isolation, but refused to be intubated to help her breathe.
"Not at my age, do not intubate me. I have already lived my life. I told them: 'Let me go in peace.'"
After a week of treatment with antibiotics and chloroquine, an antimalarial medication that shows some efficacy against the coronavirus . Gertrude is happy again at home in the western French-speaking canton of Neuchatel with her cat and family.
"I hope to regain enough strength to live a little longer. I have grandchildren, great-grandchildren, I would like to see and hear them. I chat with them online with my iPad." Fatton was already ill in her own home in the city of Le Locle for a week, but when she developed respiratory problems an ambulance took her to the La Chaux-de-Fonds hospital.
"They took blood and took my blood pressure. They put antibiotics directly into my vein three times a day. It was very difficult, but it worked," he says. "I wasn't afraid to die, no. Not at my age. At 95, after all, it's time to go. But I didn't think I was going to die at all. I wasn't afraid."
Fatton, who uses a walker, had been healthy all his life, although he did take blood pressure medications and sometimes a cough syrup for bronchitis. Her daughter Jacqueline recalls: "When the doctor called to tell me that my mother's blood oxygen was going down and that they had 24 hours to stop it, I was very, very scared and thought I would lose her that night."
"The next day, the doctors said, 'Let's try all the medications we can.' ... On the third day, the oxygen went up again. The medications worked extremely well. He was able to call twice a day on the cell phone. When I saw that he could talk to me without coughing much, I knew we had won, "says Jacqueline.
The number of deaths from coronavirus in Switzerland reaches 197 people, and the case count has increased to 12,161, according to data from the Ministry of Health .
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