Coronavirus: I was suffocating – but power of prayer quickly reopened my lungs and brought peace, says mother-of-three

Forty-six-year-old Phd student Joanne Morrison, was coping with the virus well for five days until her breathing quickly nose-dived. She now confesses that she had “really underestimated the power of the virus” which she says was unlike anything she had ever experienced before.

Around 8pm on day five, she was turning blue and the emergency operator instructed her husband Mark to rush out and get the nearest defibrillator when he sent out an urgent prayer request to friends.

Initially highly reluctant to go public, Joanne later decided that she had to tell her story to bring hope to others.

In otherwise good health, her symptoms of “a very dry harsh cough right from the lungs up” began on March 20, but without any temperature.

Although she had no official test to confirm it was Coronavirus, she firmly believes that is what gripped her with deadly force at 8pm five days later.

“It was like somebody was pushing a big heavy stone into my chest,” she said. “I felt like a set of bagpipes having all the air squeezed out in a vice. I tried to remain very calm but I could just feel this fear coming over me that I was going to suffocate and that I wasn’t going to make it. The overwhelming fear was not of dying myself - but what ‘would happen to my girls?’”

Her husband Mark phoned the ambulance because they could see her hands and lips turning blue.

“He then got off the phone and started to pray for me. He sent a text around people asking them to pray and started to read Psalm 91. And it wasn’t long after that everything just changed quite quickly.

“I felt the control starting to come back. I felt really from deep within this calmness and peace and this reassurance that this just wasn’t my time and the panic left me.

“The blueness left my hands and lips and I was able to sit up and focus on deep breathing. So by the time the ambulance came they seemed quite surprised to see me looking so well.”

Her oxygen levels were fine and her heart rate soon returned to normal. The paramedics said they didn’t have a protocol for such a case so she decided to go with them in case she deteriorated again.
Then she walked down the stairs to the ambulance herself. Its nebuliser helped stabilise her breathing on the way to hospital, from which she was discharged four hours later.  
“But to me it was clear that God had stepped in when I was waiting for the paramedicas.”

One thing that helped her, she says, was “three step breathing” she learnt in Yoga and another other was eating and drinking well and taking lots of rest. “Because to me this is like a force that your body has to use every last ounce of energy and resource to fight.”

She adds: “I know people have different beliefs and I fully respect that. But for me God stepping in when my body needed it was key. To some He may help them make sense of all this or cope with fear and anxiety. For others he may carry them when they are grieving.

“But for me, Jesus is not just up in the sky looking down watching his creation suffering but is here right with us. We just have to ask him into our lives and cry unto him in these times.”

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