I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to write this post coherently, so excuse the waffle, but I’m going to try in the hope that it helps raise sepsis awareness.
I don’t know whether it’s that I don’t remember quite how bad it was because I was so ill, or because I’ve simply blocked it out. Now, 3 months on, it’s as if I can remember scenes in a film, but not the plot line – little vignettes that play out in my head and I keep thinking – ‘did that really happen?’ Unfortunately reader, it did.
28 March – I was booked in for what was always going to be a ‘high-risk’ op. I was due to have my spleen removed, along with a benign mass the size of a grapefruit. I know, impressive huh? After 6 hours on the operating table and a few ‘hairy moments’ I came round in the acute medical unit, relieved and dosed up to my EYEBALLS with all the good stuff.
24 hours later when I tried to get out of bed for the first time, I immediately knew something was up. I’d had 2 c-sections so was no stranger to abdominal surgery, but even raising myself up slightly in bed felt like my chest was being crushed and the pain was blocking out my vision and slurring my speech. Cue a rush of doctors, scans and the realisation that my left lung had collapsed and the pain was sending my heart-rate loopy (technical term). The next week was tough but I was determined to get home to my boys so, in hind sight, I ignored the fact that things ‘weren’t right’ and pushed on through.
After 48 hours back at home and all the morphine in the world, the inevitable happened and at 2am I was whizzed back in with a post-op infection in dramatic, blue-light fashion. Another procedure later, a week of IV antibiotics and I was deemed fit enough to go home. I was so relieved to be finally out of hospital and for the whole thing to be ‘over’ that I didn’t think twice about being discharged – looking back I think the sheer exhaustion and pain clouded my judgement – I still couldn’t walk more than 2-3 paces and the pain was nowhere near managed – but home I went.
Can you guess the next chapter in the story? Well I for one never saw it coming. I’ve always been aware of sepsis as something to look out for when the boys are poorly, we even had a symptom checker stuck to the fridge for a while but it wasn’t even on my radar when things took a turn for the worse, but it was in fact, the big S.
I collapsed at home with a temp of 40c – I’m not sure if there are ‘classic sepsis symptoms’ and I wouldn’t use mine as a barometer but I had a racing heart, cold sweats and I guess as a coping mechanism, it all felt a bit ‘out of body’.
I was swiftly triaged back onto the ward and at 1am I had a test to ‘see if my body was shutting down’. Which is about as dramatic as it sounds. Even though I knew that was on the cards, I felt a weird calm descend, as if my body was just focusing on breathing in and out and couldn’t fathom much else. No ‘fight or flight’ adrenalin kick in – just a weird, eerie calm. My friends and family were AMAZING at not panicking either, well in front of me at least. My body was by this point, spent. My veins collapsed at the sight of a needle so getting the IV antibiotics into me was a constant battle, my heart rhythm was still all over the place and I was battling a raging fever. Repeat for 7 days and gradually, as my infection markers dropped, so the danger passed and the pain improved. It wasn’t until the pain had receeded significantly that I realised how bad it was, I can only describe it as when you turn the radio off and realise you hadn’t noticed the background noise, if that makes sense?
I have to talk briefly about the care I received during a month at the hospitality of the NHS. From the paramedics who made an emergency situation feel like a walk in the park, to the catering man who always managed to find me ‘something I fancied’ when I hadn’t eaten for 2 days and the radiographer who held my hand as I cried silently after my 5th CT scan in 3 weeks. I saw how overstretched they were, how chroncially tired but not once were they snappy, impatient or did they let on to their patients the immense pressure they were under. I’m not going to pass political comment on the position of the NHS, but as they celebrate their 70th birthday today, all I can say is, I realise exactly how lucky I am.
So what now, 3 months on? I am still seeing the nurses for my wound care and will need reconstructive surgery on my tummy at some point but the hangover of sepsis it would seem is – pretty much like a hangover. Constant bone-tired exhaustion, aches and a complete brain-fog. I am back to running regularly and working full-time, so don’t get me wrong, I have come on leaps and bounds from not being able to even dress myself 8 weeks ago – but it does feel different. Life feels different. I’m trying to treat my body kindly, gradually build my strength back up and giving it the credit it deserves for not shutting down on me when it probably would quite have liked to. It’s taught me to listen to it more, to stop ‘powering through’ and ‘coping’ and learn when to accept that I need to slow down. I’m not going to change my 100 mile-an-hour approach to life overnight but my scars are a daily reminder that although we strive to be resilient, strong and brave – when we’re not, that’s okay too.
