British rock icon Marianne Faithfull was among the first celebrities to test positive for COVID-19, released from hospital in April after being under doctors’ care for more than 20 days.
In a new interview with the Guardian, the “Broken English” singer reveals she came closer to death than people may have realized.
More than six months later, symptoms still linger, including short-term memory loss. “I remember the distant past very well. It’s recent things I can’t remember. And that’s ghastly. Awful. You wouldn’t believe how awful it is,” she explained.
In fact, she doesn’t remember becoming ill and being rushed to an intensive care unit or her experience in the hospital. “All I know is that I was in a very dark place — presumably, it was death,” she added.
In fact, nobody’s more surprised she’s still standing than she is, given her age, numerous underlying health issues brought on by breast cancer, hepatitis C, heroin use, and emphysema, the result of being a lifelong smoker.
“Oh man,” she said. “I wish I’d never picked up a cigarette in my life.”
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“She wasn’t actually meant to make it through,” Warren Ellis, who collaborated with Faithfull on her latest solo album, She Walks in Beauty, told the Guardian. “That she survived it — it’s insane.”
In fact, it wasn’t until she’d recovered that Faithfull realized how close she’d come to the end; when she read her medical notes, she came across the phrase “palliative care only.”
And even though she did recover, she continues to suffer side effects.
“Three things: the memory, fatigue, and my lungs are still not okay — I have to have oxygen and all that stuff,” she said. “The side effects are so strange. Some people come back from it but they can’t walk or speak. Awful.”
Another terrible side effect is that she’s no longer able to sing.
“Maybe that’s over. I would be incredibly upset if that was the case, but, on the other hand, I am 74. I don’t feel cursed and I don’t feel invincible. I just feel f**king human,” she declared.
“But what I do believe in, which gives me hope, I do believe in miracles. You know, the doctor, this really nice National Health doctor, she came to see me and she told me that she didn’t think my lungs would ever recover. And where I finally ended up is: Okay, maybe they won’t, but maybe, by a miracle, they will. I don’t know why I believe in miracles. I just do. Maybe I have to, the journey I’ve been on, the things that I’ve put myself through, that I’ve got through so far and I’m OK. Does that sound really corny?”
She concluded: “We must be hopeful — it’s really important. And I am, yes. I’m bloody still here.”
