"Here, it is not a Club Med".
Charles Billion-Rey, 79, walks at the pace imposed by a treadmill while a physiotherapist at the rehabilitation center, located in the Drôme, regularly checks his oxygen saturation level.
Since the spring, this establishment has been giving a second wind to patients who have been cured but whom the coronavirus has amputated by half of their respiratory capacities.
After two weeks of intensive rehabilitation, Mr. Billion-Rey stands up and takes a step more and more decided.
"When I arrived here I was on a stretcher, everything flattened" says the septuagenarian, who spent 15 days bedridden in pneumology at the hospital in Valence after catching the Covid-19, "a filth" that he " wish no one ”.
Big progress during the first 10-15 days
Surrounded by physiotherapists and adapted sports teachers, the former cook continued walking, cycling and gymnastics sessions at Dieulefit for nearly 3 hours a day.
He says he has already gained two pounds out of the seven lost in hospital.
"I also make movements in my room in addition, I force myself", confides the one who is eager to find his wife when he leaves.
In the cardio-respiratory center nestled between the hills of Drôme Provençale, patients who have developed severe forms of coronavirus stay on average 25 days.
"Beyond that, it is difficult, because they feel surviving but still confined", explains Frédéric Hérengt, one of the two pulmonologists of the structure.
“The best progress is in the first 10-15 days.
It is a question of the patient being able to get up, resume walking, recover his mobility ”.
