This is a personal one.
The last month and a half have been hell. I mean that literally. 100% hell. I’ve been to the absolute depths. I need to write this all out, get it off my chest.
I was admitted via A&E to hospital very late on a Thursday night in July with severe sepsis and suspected appendicitis. After a night of x-rays, CT scans and blood tests they discovered that it was not appendicitis, I had developed an extremely large infection within my pelvic cavity. This infection had become systemic, which means that it entered my blood, and the rest of my body. I was operated on first thing in the morning to remove the abscess. For the next 3 days I remained mostly unconscious, unable to breathe without oxygen, unable to move if I did wake up. IV tubes constantly fed cocktails of antibiotics, morphine and saline into my veins. The infection within my blood was unresponsive to all antibiotics, and I was dying. On the Monday the microbiology department released permission for a normally restricted antibiotic to be used, it took four more days but they managed to stabilise me. A couple more days after that, once they were sure I was not going to relapse they allowed me to go home. Since then it’s been rocky, I’ve had to return to the hospital due to blacking out, and the painkillers don’t always manage to block the pain, it’s been a very, very slow road back to recovery. I’m not there yet, but I’m hoping it won’t take too much longer. I’ve had to give up control over everything, breathing, drinking, weeing, washing myself, I have been incapable of anything, too weak to lift my own head.
I never expected to go through major surgery. I never expected that my life would be so easy to lose. In cases of severe sepsis the survival rate is 50%, in cases of septic shock, what I eventually reached, the survival rate drops much lower.
To come out the other side of something like this, my world has shifted around me. I don’t know when I’m going to adjust to it. To be handed back your own life and know that you almost didn’t get it back, it’s terrifying. It’s a fever dream.
I still feel like I’m back in the hospital, with a skyrocketing fever, feeling like I’m lost and blind in a jungle, asking nurses I didn’t know to hold my hands to slow the fear, while tears rolled down my face and I strained to breathe. But I’m out. I’m definitely out. It’s over and I’ve just got to keep telling myself that. Keep telling myself that I never have to go back there, and try and make sense of the world I’ve been left with.
