Shrewsbury boss Steve Cotterill: I wasn't ready to leave my family, I had to fight for my life

The Town manager spent almost 50 days in hospital battling the virus and other complications over two spells between January and March.

He has since spent time recovering at home and returned to work on July 1, taking training for pre-season in Shrewsbury.

And the boss has revealed the traumatic details from when he first tested positive on a lateral flow test after Matt Millar was the first Shrews player to contract the virus, to the harrowing ordeal of intensive care and endless weeks in Bristol Royal Infirmary’s A800 Ward. As well as Covid-19. he endured a punctured lung, emphysema and, once eventually re-admitted, contracted Covid-pneumonia.

Town boss Cotterill recalls: “I went to sleep on Friday night (January 1) at 9pm and woke up 3am with the bedsheets drenched. I felt really poorly Saturday morning.

“I had a lateral flow test show positive. I had to isolate in my hotel, food dropped at door. Didn’t get out of room bed for 10 days.

“People say day four or five is worse, but for me I ended up in hotel bed for 10 days, all I did was wake up. I had a coffee outside my door, I didn’t eat, just a bowl of fruit at lunch, went to the toilet once per day.

“I lost about a stone-and-a-half and felt really poorly. I wasn’t getting any better.”

Cotterill returned home to Bristol from his temporary Shrewsbury hotel, where symptoms and his conditions worsened significantly over the next few days.

He explained: “The coughing got so bad you think you’re going to pass out.

“We live off 20 per cent oxygen, mine had dropped. I had no energy and couldn’t eat.

“I got taken in by ambulance, I couldn’t have got myself in (to hospital).

“You have to stay in the ambulance until there is space in the holding bay. They put oxygen on you. I got into the room for the start of many blood tests, needles, injections. I needed 91 per cent oxygen. I knew I was bad but didn’t realise I was that bad.

“I was in that holding room for 12 to 14 hours before they find you a room, which I had on the A800 ward.”

The boss, who was having all of his medication administered intravenously added: “I can’t explain how bad the coughing was. Even at home it was almost like choking. I knew I was bad but it went from bad to worse.

“I needed three weeks of fluid hydrating me, I was so dehydrated, there were steroids and everything else.

“I knew I was poorly because I don’t go to the doctors never mind the hospital. The last time I’d have visited my doctor was probably 30 years ago.”

Things deteriorated further when the 56-year-old required something resembling a ‘mini-operation’ to install a PICC line under his bicep, connected to his heart, to take blood as the veins in his arms simply couldn’t give any more.

Cotterill, who this week felt the need to apologise to Town fans for feeling he let them down, suffered a punctured lung, which went undiagnosed, and intensified his battle with the virus.

He said: “When you’re on oxygen, it’s like you’re trying to blow up a balloon but it’s got a pin prick in the neck of the balloon. You’re never getting the oxygen to the lungs as there’s a hole in the lung.

“I had Covid, a punctured lung and emphysema, I’d lost one-and-half stone. I’d got a neck like Mike Tyson in his heyday. No muscles, legs and arms had gone.

“I remember waking up four or five days later in the middle of the night. It was like I was really tight across my chest, at 4am I had an ECG.

“From that moment I had every test going, scans, X-rays, ECGs, it was like a fairground and I had a ride on every one of those machines.

“They hadn’t known my lung was punctured and that’s why I wasn’t getting better.”

Cotterill retained his sharp sense of humour while telling his arduous tale. He explained to a registrar, who asked him how he was feeling, that he felt ‘like Shrewsbury – in the relegation zone’.

But the desperate reality of life in intensive care was not lost on the experienced football manager. Cotterill describes himself as a fighter, and he had to face up to his biggest fight yet.

He explained: “When I was in intensive care, the care of people is incredible, the oxygen masks you have to have on – you do think ‘God am I going to get out of here?’

“But you have to get that out of your thoughts very quickly. I’ve never not fought for anything in my life and I’ve fought for a lot of people in my life.

“I thought I can surely find the strength to fight for my life.

“I have an incredible family, I’m not prepared to leave them yet.

“That was a tough time, you haven’t even got FaceTime or any phone calls, my phone was racking up with messages, I just didn’t feel well enough or have energy to plough through them.

“My face was puffy compared to normally and still is, I’ve fat around my middle from steroids, I don’t like it but thankfully I have an incredible specialist in Katrina Curtis who I love to death. Without her I might not have been here.

“She took over my case, I saw her last week before I came back to training, she was great. I had to have a Tocilizumab, it lowers your immune system for the steroids to get to your lungs, so the steroids can fight the Covid.

“The Tocilizumab will be in you for three months, so I couldn’t have the vaccination with that in me. I had to be very careful, I would’ve been vulnerable to anything, which re-admission to hospital proved.”

Cotterill’s interview was the first of a three-parter detailing the extent of his battle with Covid-19. The remaining parts will be published in the coming days.