Four weeks ago, as Spring sprung at the beginning of March, life was very normal. The Coronavirus was a "Chinese thing", thousands of miles away and not of huge concern to the UK. I was looking forward to the Cheltenham Festival, a holiday in Japan in May, spending time with the family, and the birth of our second grandson in June.

A month on and tens of thousands are dead worldwide, global economies have been shredded and there is no definitive end in sight.

A month on and I'm a week out of hospital, with no energy whatsoever, but feeling very fortunate to be here at all.

Mine is not a unique story by any means, but I write it out of a desire to share an experience, for what it's worth, so that anyone in a similar position may gain a slightly better insight into what to expect.

Firstly, some background. I'm a 64-year-old male, reasonably fit, semi-retired. I had prostate cancer 5 years ago, and I was born with only one kidney, which has not been a hindrance at all, but does raise my risk profile. I don't smoke, don't drink excessively and my weight is normal. All pretty dull, really!

My flu-like symptoms hit on the evening of 18th March – headache, aching torso, just feeling a bit rubbish all round. As I take a daily statin, I also wondered if I was getting muscle aches from that – a common side-effect, which I've had before. This went on for about a week. I had no temperature or cough and a call to NHS111 was sufficiently reassuring that I didn't have COVID19 symptoms.

Our pregnant daughter and family had also come to stay, avoiding the building work at their house, and as she and her husband now had to work from home, and their nursery for our grandson was closed for the duration, we were also childcare.

Dosed up on paracetamol, I wasn't getting any worse, but I wasn't improving either.

On the afternoon of 25th March, though, things went downhill quite quickly. Suddenly, I was having trouble breathing and the realisation dawned that this wasn't just a bout of the 'flu.

A further trip through the NHS111 website resulted in a 999 call being made, my wife having to insist that it was now an emergency, and within 15 minutes an ambulance was outside the house. The paramedic, Emma, was professionalism personified – thorough, calming, and decisive. A call to my own doctor, and consultations with her own colleagues determined that a trip to hospital was advised. No-one was allowed to go with me for risk of infection, and this was the first time in my life I'd been in an ambulance.

Suddenly, it was all quite serious.

I went into Kingston Hospital COVID19 unit at 1815 on 25th March. I was quickly seen by a doctor, who explained that I almost certainly had COVID19, but that unless I was going to go and stay on the ward, and he didn't think I was bad enough for that, I wasn't to be tested.

The treatment he explained, was the same whether I was tested or not – lots of fluids and paracetamol, and the hope that my body was strong enough to overcome the virus.

There was a battery of blood tests, another ECG and a chest x-ray. The surprise, and exacerbating factor, was that they discovered I also had a bacterial infection on top of the COVID19.

My body couldn't fight the both of them.

The Portuguese nurse who looked after me the whole time was called, I think, Anna – and again, was calming, thorough and decisive. She took the bloods, administered the ECG, sent me for the x-ray and filled me full of intravenous paracetamol and liquids. Another doctor prescribed the antibiotics for the bacterial infection and at 2215, I was sent home to recover.

A week on and I'm on the mend, for sure, not in leaps and bounds, but small incremental daily steps. The normal morning shave/shower routine necessitates a lay down afterwards, but my appetite is returning although, strangely, I've no desire for a drink at all.

My wife appears to be getting over mild COVID19 symptoms, and thus far our daughter, son-in-law and grandson seem unaffected. We've self-isolated within the home as much as you can, but nothing is guaranteed.

I don't think I'd be here, were it not for the expertise and professionalism of the local NHS and the team of people who looked after me. I don't know how to properly thank them, but protecting that organisation, with human resources and plenty of the right kit, so that it can do the best it can in the weeks and months ahead, will help us overcome this virus and to manage its social and economic effects down the line.

Certainly, right now, social distancing and self-isolation must be adhered to, if we are to stand even a chance of initially flattening the curve.

Thereafter, widespread testing may allow those who've had the virus, and recovered, to start to go about their daily business more regularly, bringing a growing sense of recovery and a notion that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

What the population needs from the government is resolute leadership, transparency on trends and statistics, and a clear sign that when the time is right – and no-one knows yet when that will be because we don't have enough data to build reliable models – there is a worldwide, coordinated strategy for a return to whatever normality might look like in the future.