Eyewitness: Vietnam's Sars survivor

Nguyen was on a respirator for 10 days at the Hanoi French Hospital

Nguyen Thi Men, the only health worker at the centre of Vietnam's Sars outbreak to fall severely ill and survive, tells her story to the BBC Vietnamese Service's Nga Pham.

The hospital where I work is pretty small, everything is laid out on a few floors. Normally I only take care of newly born babies, but sometimes when it's busy they ask me to assist the other nurses.

When the American-Chinese patient, Johnny Cheng, first came to the hospital another nurse was looking after him.

He showed the usual flu symptoms and we suspected he might have the so-called Hong Kong chicken flu.

But what was unusual was that he coughed so much - the whole 40 minutes he was coughing and expelling huge amounts of phlegm.

My whole body was aching, but I told myself it was just fatigue, maybe a cold

His health deteriorated quickly overnight. Yet he was still thought to have flu.

We didn't take any special preventive measures, as we normally don't wear masks when taking care of flu patients.

They asked me to look after him during a night shift. He was already in a critical condition and had to use a breathing machine. We still didn't know what he had.

But then we ourselves began feeling unwell. My whole body was aching, but I told myself it was just fatigue, maybe a cold. I was struggling for about four days until 4 March, when I suddenly felt extremely weak at the end of my shift.

They gave me some flu medicine. It didn't help. On the night of 5 March I developed a high fever. So they put me in the hospital together with 10 other staff who had the same symptoms.

The American patient had been transferred to Hong Kong, where he died. We were told we might have contracted something from our contact with him. Only then I began to worry.

We were put in an isolated area of the hospital, which remained full at that time.

The thing that disturbs me most is my right leg - I can't walk, can't even move the leg without feeling an excruciating pain in my joints

When I realised that the illness was infectious I started to panic, as I was worried my family might have caught it from me.

But the whole time I was still hoping that I would recover soon - we didn't know how deadly the virus is.

More and more people got infected and had to be hospitalised. The staffing was scarce as most of us were sick.

Then my situation started getting worse at an amazing speed. Breathing was difficult and I had to be under a respirator for about 10 days. I was unconscious most of the time.

Now, looking back, everyone says I am lucky because I had been one of the worst cases. I guess I am, as some of my colleagues have already died.

Slow recovery

The luckiest thing is that none of my family got anything from me.

My husband, my kids - they are all healthy now. I have been back with them for more than 10 days.

My lungs haven't got back to normal and I still feel tight in the chest. But I suffer from a bad insomnia; most nights I can only sleep for a couple hours.

My muscles are so weak I can hardly lift anything, and my eyes are swollen and red.

I don't have many visitors as most people worry they might catch it from me even though I have been cleared by doctors

But the thing that disturbs me most is my right leg. I can't walk, can't even move the leg without feeling an excruciating pain in my joints. I used to be very active, very physical and I did a lot of exercise.

I'm training to walk with the help of a physiotherapist and I do it every morning until midday.

I don't have many visitors as most people worry they might catch it from me, even though I have been cleared by doctors.

But it's not easy to catch Sars unless you have face to face contact with a very sick patient.

To my friends I say: don't stay in an air-conditioned environment, have your windows open, and your house well-ventilated.

I have the feeling that the virus dies quickly in open air.