For its wonders and prowess in the bedroom, Viagra has been eulogised. Older men like the late Playboy’s Hugh Hefner and actor Michael Douglas were said to have sung its praises.
In fact, when 80-year-old Vito Cangini took the wonder drug a few weeks ago, untold energy so poured in that he was ready to run a romantic marathon with his Ukrainian wife Natalia Kyrychok. Alas, she was unwilling… Then the unthinkable happened. In a fiery rage, he fatally stabbed her.
But don’t even begin to imagine that the acclaims accorded Viagra is limited to the oldies until you hear Tom Hill in the 12 December 2017 edition of Cosmopolitan Magazine. “Getting ready for a night out with my friends, I couldn’t help but feel nervous,” Tom Hill wrote about a 26-year-old man.
“I’d just got a message from Amy, a primary school teacher I’d fancied for years. She was a friend of a friend and I felt there was chemistry between us. The weekend before we’d bumped into each other at a club and – feeling confident after a few scotch and sodas – I finally kissed her. Now a week had passed and Amy had just texted ‘You out tonight? Maybe you can carry me home this time… x.’
“Part of me was excited – I’d been fantasising about sleeping with her for years. But I was also hit by a huge pang of anxiety. Amy and I had lots of mutual friends, mostly girls, and on many occasions, I’d heard them gossiping about one-night stands or their boyfriends’ bedroom technique. While women think men discuss their sex lives, the truth is many of us don’t, at least not in any intimate level of detail. I’d built up having sex with Amy to such a degree that the fear of being a disappointment to her swamped me.
“That’s when I thought about taking Viagra for the first time. My friend James had bought a supply off the internet to use with a girl he’d been pursuing for months. Some of you reading this might be shocked to learn that men – and yes, I’m talking young guys – do this (and admit it to their mates). But sometimes, the pressure of being a proficient lover with stamina, technique, and the ability to not fall asleep until we’ve made you orgasm at least twice can affect our, ahem, ability to stand to attention…”
Yet, for all its erotic virtues, Viagra actually brought a Covid patient back to life! This nurse fighting for her life in a 28-day Covid coma was saved after colleagues used Viagra to treat her.
Monica Almeida, 37, was just 72 hours from her ventilator being turned off when medics had the idea to use the erectile dysfunction drug, reports The Sun.
The level of oxygen the mum-of-two needed to be dropped by half and her condition improved after a week – meaning she made it home for Christmas.
Monica has now praised the quick-thinking doctors for using the drug, which helped open up her airwaves.
The specialist respiratory nurse, from the UK, said: “I had a little joke with the consultant after I came round because I knew him.
“He told me it was the Viagra, I laughed and thought he was joking, but he said ‘no, really, you’ve had a large dose of Viagra’.
“It was my little Christmas miracle.”
Monica, who treated Covid patients while working for NHS Lincolnshire, tested positive for the disease in October.
The double-jabbed mum had lost her sense of taste and smell and was coughing up blood by day four of her diagnosis.
After her oxygen levels dropped the next day, she went to the hospital but was discharged with a prescription and no treatment.
Within just two hours of being home, Monica woke up unable to breathe and was rushed to Lincoln County Hospital where she went straight to the resuscitation room.
Medics battled to restore her oxygen levels to normal but her condition deteriorated and she was taken to ICU.
She was placed in a coma on November 16 with her condition so severe her parents were told to fly from Portugal to England to say their goodbyes.
Monica said: “I could have been gone at just 37 years old, but I suppose I was a bit of a monkey and kept on fighting.”
With the prognosis looking bleak, doctors decided to use the unusual treatment to help Monica.
The brave Covid victim emerged from her coma on December 14 and was allowed to return home on Christmas Eve.
Viagra has previously been banded around as a possible way to treat Covid patients as the little blue pill dilates blood vessels and opens the airways.
Scientists are carrying out tests to determine whether it can be used in the same way as inhaling nitric oxide, which can boost oxygen levels in the blood.
Viagra can be given to Brit coronavirus patients if they have agreed to be in a study to try experimental drugs.
Monica said: “It was definitely the Viagra that saved me.
“Within 48 hours it opened up my airwaves and my lungs started to respond.
“If you think how the drug works, it expands your blood vessels.
“I have asthma and my air sacks needed a little help.”
The mum is now recovering at her home with her husband Artur and two sons aged nine and 14.
She is now urging people to get the vaccine after being told she would have died if she hadn’t been jabbed.
Covid booster jabs offer the best chance to get through the pandemic, health officials have repeatedly said.
Monica said: “There are people out there saying the vaccine has killed people. I’m not denying there are people who react and get poorly with the vaccine, but when we look at the amount of deaths we have in unvaccinated people there is a big message there to have your jab.
“It does worry me, especially in Lincolnshire that people are against having the vaccine.
“I never expected at 37 years of age to get as ill as I did. I never thought this would happen to me and I want people to take it more seriously.”
Part of this article was originally published in The Sun with additional reports from Cosmopolitan Magazine.
