Covid: Cambridge professor recovers to sing choral music

A professor who recovered from Covid is to sing a new piece of choral music based on the diaries of the hospital nurses who treated him when he was in intensive care.

Prof Peter Johnstone, 72, spent nearly three months at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, in 2020, and he will be one of the singers at its London premiere.

Vision Of A Garden will be performed at the Royal Festival Hall on 24 October.

Clinical nurse Jill Hyde said the piece was "a huge boost to staff morale".

Mr Johnstone, a professor of maths at St John's College, Cambridge, was the first Covid patient admitted to the hospital's Neurosciences and Trauma Critical Care Unit.

His treatment included ventilation, tracheostomy, kidney dialysis and proning - lying on your front to help with breathing.

Often unconscious, he was cared for round the clock for 75 days by hundreds of health care workers, Addenbrooke's said.

The composition, by Richard Blackford, features lyrics based on the diaries written by the nurses at the end of each shift, which chronicled the day's events.

Ms Hyde said: "Diaries often help improve psychological outcomes by reducing gaps in memory and contextualising what has happened during [a patient's] admission."

The piece, whose title refers to the hospital's Jubilee Garden, also draws on Prof Johnstone's own "fragmented memories" of his treatment.

He called the diaries the "most heart-warming documents I've ever read" and was looking forward to singing the piece with his choir in London.

"My survival places an obligation on me to tell the story of what I went through, and telling it in music is a natural way for me to do that," he said.

The professor is a tenor with The Bach Choir, and the piece will be part of a programme of music performed with the Philharmonia Orchestra, which also includes works by Fauré, Vaughan Williams, Tallis and Gabriel Jackson.

Addenbrooke's intensive care consultant Ronan O'Leary said: "The story should remind us that we achieved something remarkable and our success is measured in hundreds of lives, ones we know nothing about but which are lived with pleasure and gratitude."

Prof Johnstone has also commissioned a film, called The ICU Diaries, which includes Addenbrooke's staff reading passages from the diaries.

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