About 83-year-old Robin Hanbury-Tenison’s son, whose father was one of the oldest victims of the coronavirus

Time comes to the life of every child when they realize that their parents are not invincible. That moment was later than most people for me. My father, explorer Robin Hanbury Tenison, seemed unbreakable at the age of 80.

But that changed six weeks ago. Desperate for the coronavirus, he was rushed to the hospital by a doctor in a chemo suit. We haven’t seen him since.

I was shocked when we were in sudden and horrific danger, but my father wasn’t surprised. Because the global plague was what he predicted in his new and amazing and forward-thinking book.

He didn’t think he would be one of the first victims, but he believed that such a catastrophe was imminent. Even when taming four horsemen, Covid-19 began to work in silence across Europe, with a fundamental solution released in February to overcome pandemics, wars, famines, and planet deaths. It was

His statement is clear. We humans have consistently and deliberately ignored the world in which we depend on us to support us. Deforestation, intensive agriculture, and free consumerism have destroyed the natural environment, making them vulnerable to pollution and risks that we barely understand.

History tells us that without fertile land there is hunger and war, epidemics and climate change. This pattern has destroyed civilization for centuries, and he is now facing the same fate.

An experienced explorer and conservationist, his anger at seeing the effects of viruses on remote tribes is deeply rooted. My current 83-year-old father has led more than 30 expeditions around the world. He is the founder of Survival International, an indigenous charity, and has written 27 books about the indigenous people who have lived with him on his journey.

The four horsemen – in the foreword by Prime Minister Stanley Johnson – were inspired by a trip to Central America to visit ancient Mayan temples and pyramids.

Once a million civilians, this great civilization quickly collapsed and disappeared almost completely. The similarities were obvious to my father. Plague, famine, war, and death-the four knights of the apocalypse-have extinct the Maya.

And all the epidemiologists agree. We also experienced a pandemic long ago. The risk today is the rate of its spread as it travels across the continent over hours.

He writes in this book: “Pandemics are very difficult to predict and hard to prepare. They all start with random events: crosses of pathogenicity to different species of humans. The real danger is , Probably H1N1 and probably influenza strain.

Are you familiar with it? Today he was in the hospital and a month later he was anesthetized with intensive care and recovered. This is the victim of the modern tragedy he warned society.

But there is hope. Not only for his own health, but for the world as we know it.

He claims that unlike ancient civilizations, he has the skills to overcome these and other threats. Scientists are investigating the effects of the bacterial and organism ecosystems that inhabit our digestive system (the gut biome). It can play a role in your ability to fight illness, physical health, and even mood. Our body is “literally full of life,” he says.

Using this power could be a more sustainable way to combat a pandemic than creating a new chemical or drug, especially if it is a problem of increasing antibiotic resistance.

And of crucial importance is that next to nature I had my father recover when he returned to Cabilla, our family farm in the Corniche countryside, which he purchased at the age of 23 in the early 1960s. There is.

He waved everything from dairy cattle, sheep and cattle to Angora goat breeding, red deer blood and boar-rich bovine breeding. All trees are planted by him and he knows all wild flowers, bushes and birds.

He was always a natural man, whether he was sleeping in the Kalahari Desert with Bushman, waving a hammock in the Amazon rainforest, or listening to Jaguar infiltrating overnight. .

A few years ago, after leaving the army, I took over the farm. My wife Lizzy and I live in an old farmhouse, and our parents live in a converted barn across the garden. Since my parents returned from a ski vacation in France in early March, we were keeping a strict distance of 2 meters.

Within days, my dad had a dry cough. Just walking in the garden made him unusually weak, and by the evening he had a fever that made his breathing difficult.

So we called an ambulance and were taken by the paramedics, no one could hug the goodbye. He was anesthetized and his ventilator confirmed coronavirus within 24 hours of his arrival at Deliford Hospital in Plymouth.

He was sedated for nearly a month, and we were told that he has a 20 percent survival rate in his age and condition. We turned from his desperate optimism and self-confidence to his masculinity and self-confidence to depressed misery.

Marlin Hanbury-Tenison: Every child’s life moment comes when his parents realize they are not invincible. That moment was later than me: 6 weeks ago (photo, Robin and Marlin Hanbury Tenison, Kabila, 1989)

His lungs have stopped working. Then his kidneys failed and he was on dialysis. This further reduced his chances. We would have abandoned hope if he and we did not receive constant kindness and tender care from the intensive care nurse.

He was severely suffering from a serious form of sedative delirium when they started waking him up. Finding yourself in and out of your body surrounded by strangers in full-faced multi-tube gear can be scary at best.

Immersed in a mist of tranquilizers, antibiotics, and other medications, causing panic and loss of direction. He had to be sedated again a few times, and he never seemed clear and did not know where he was. The first time I spoke properly was an unforgettable moment in my life. The nurse had driven his bed to the “secret garden” in Deriford for IC patients.

There was a sun on his face and a green background. He didn’t make much sense. But before the confusion, he looked up into the sky, stating how much he had missed the blue, and praised the staff for some growing flowers.

Even this minimal exposure to the natural environment seemed to cause a turning point in his recovery. It’s been a long way, but my dad is slowly back. I have long believed in the healing powers of the natural world and spent hours immersing myself in peaceful woods in the fight against my devil from three Afghan tours.

Studies in Japan have shown that the forest environment promotes lower concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol, lower pulse rate and lower blood pressure. With that in mind, we were already planning to open our farm as a natural retreat where people could escape the stresses and pressures of a busy life.

Our first guest will come this month. The opening was postponed due to the Covid crisis. But the first time it recovers is to be my father. And I know that regaining an old explorer will immediately improve his condition.

The first step is to gently take him back to the woods he knows well, drank in the air and stare at his old friend Orc. Orcs darken the light that reaches the ground, providing homes and food to the ecosystems they encourage. .

After we have already begun repainting the farm-returning species such as beavers, voles, pine martens, and eventually red squirrels-it has been lost over the last few centuries, so our father says they’re intertwined Thoughts have a wonderful poetic sense again. Take him back naturally after his medical trip.

Pulling a land fence is like pulling all those drops from his arm. My father left the intensive care unit a few weeks ago and is now in the rehabilitation department to strengthen them before bringing him back home.

He is not in the woods yet, but the nurses and doctors are all surprised by his tenacity and refuse to give in to all the difficulties.

It was probably his most special adventure. During his years as a hero, he hasn’t let me down yet. In fact, he has already said there are two plans for his liberation: a series of challenges to write and fund a book about his experience so that more ICU can build a garden. Work on.

Sunlight, fresh air, and some greenery can work strangely. In these uncertain times, it is a lesson that we all can remember.