CHAPTER 4. The Missing Days
Hold My Hand: A Journey Back to Life
If you missed the previous chapters of Hold My Hand: A Journey Back to Life then you click on these links to quickly jump to the Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 and catch up on any chapters that you haven’t read before continuing. Thanks for reading!
26 DEC 2022 @ 13.01
Jacqui has been admitted with vomiting, fever and extreme pain in her stomach on the 23rd. Since then she’s been operated on and is being treated for flesh-eating bacteria in her stomach and in her thigh and is in an induced coma on a ventilator. They will continue to treat her over the next few days. She’s stable and I hope the worst is over now. Kim
The next few days are a blank. I was unconscious, kept alive by a ventilator in ICU. The medical team were working hard to reverse the effects of the septic shock on my body. And to slow, and hopefully stop, any further spread of the infection.
On December 26th (Boxing Day for other people) I was back into the hyperbaric chamber by 10am – another 90 minutes, 18 meters ‘down’.
My CRP continued to fly high and was headed for 400. Some 4000% above the normal maximum.
Kim now knew where I was. He and Mum were coming in and out of the city center to visit the hospital. Aunty Mary also came in once before she had to fly back to the UK while I was still out for the count.
Traffic was light as it was Christmas, but still there never seemed to be a parking space available anywhere near the hospital. Even if they found a space it often had a time limit, so Kim had to move the car every couple of hours. As if they needed more stress.
They gave in quickly – not caring about the cost – and started taking a taxi each way. Afterwards, when I asked Kim about those days and their visits he used the receipts as a reference to work out when they came to visit me each day. Otherwise he couldn’t remember.
They had nothing to do but sit by my bed. Hoping for the best. Taking breaks to get coffee or something to eat in the hospital café downstairs.
ICU was a busy, noisy, unpleasant environment – so Kim tells me. People were dying all around me. No sooner was their bed empty than a new patient had filled their spot. He has a picture of me lying there. I’ve never seen it. I don’t intend to ever look at it.
I’m not inclined to see myself like that. A tube in my throat helping me breath. That awful nasogastric tube sticking out of my nose. Medicines and fluids flowing into my bloodstream via the line in my neck. All those leads and wires connecting me to the monitors. So sick. So vulnerable.
I can see it in my mind – I don’t need to see the real thing.
My medical journal shows that by now I was deemed to be in ‘moderate’ shock. They were hoping I could be out of ICU in around three days. The shock reversal treatments were working and at least my kidney function was improving.
December 27th brought yet more sitting and waiting for Kim and Mum. I was taken back to the hyperbaric chamber for my third and final treatment.
Then OPERATION #3. With this type of infection, they have to go into your body repeatedly to check if the bacteria are still there and continuing their flesh-eating party. Plus they needed to change the sponge that was part of the special vacuum drain on my leg.
27 DEC 2022 @ 20.13
So she’s been taken to the operating theatre again and we’re hoping that they’ll try to wake her afterwards. They hope to close some of the wounds that have been open for the past 2 days. Kim
Finally, they closed the wound in my abdomen that they’d opened two days earlier and that stretched straight down from my navel. It wasn’t closed with stitches – instead, it was closed with 24 brutal looking metal clips. It looked rough. Gruesome. And yet whoever did it took the time to make it look the best they could.
I had a wide tattoo on my stomach, just below my navel. An abstract V-shape design, the pattern mirrored on both sides. Whoever closed me up lined it up – they did a good job of putting that tattoo back together. Not knowing that in a future surgery it would disappear altogether and be relegated to a part of my history.
They continued pouring liters of antibiotics into my veins. They kept me in the induced coma – unconscious and they hoped pain-free courtesy of the propofol and fentanyl that they also fed into my body.
27 DEC 2022 @ 22.49
She’s back from surgery, but still unconscious until tomorrow so we haven’t been able to talk to her. We’ll come in early tomorrow when they try to wake her up. We hope to finally talk to the doctors tomorrow too. Will send an update after that. Kim
Kim was there. Always trying to get answers. Trying to understand what was going on. Wanting to know every detail. Carefully tracking my treatment and my test results. Making sure the doctors and nurses kept their promises. Feeling as if his life was imploding. Scared to death I was going to die.
By December 28th Kim was starting to lose patience and his inner grizzly bear was rearing it’s head. He needed to protect me – he was in my corner – he wanted to do everything in his power to ensure I had the best chance of surviving. But he was at the end of his tether. He wasn’t letting the medical team off the hook.
If he wasn’t at the hospital, then he was calling them at 7am to ensure they followed through on whatever plan had been made the previous day in terms of my treatment. Making sure they fed me through that horrible tube in my nose. He didn’t know then, he was working from gut instinct, but he was absolutely right that nutrition was key to give me a chance of fighting off this type of infection.
Perhaps referring to him as a grizzly bear makes Kim sound too nasty. All teeth and roar. But he’s one of the nicest people that you can meet. He’s kind, warm, and compassionate. He gives the best (bear) hugs that wrap you up in safety of his arms. He’s the first to cry at a movie – especially if it involves a sick child.
He won’t give up if there’s a problem to be solved. He’s persistent as hell. When I first knew him he was part of the IT support team in the company I had joined. I still remember his tenacity when it came to solving problems. Finding the source of the 187 (yes, I really did say 187) viruses that I’d managed to accumulate on my laptop. I was the nightmare user! He never lets up until he has a solution. However long it takes.
The nurses added an entry in my medical journal – he felt he wasn’t getting enough information, wanted to speak to a doctor, and really wanted them to get me off the ventilator. He was so upset, watching me as I started to fight the tube and the machine. I have no memory of that time. At least it gave him some comfort when I could tell him that afterwards.
Kim and Mum kept on waiting. Holding my hand. Hoping. Doing their best to try and hold it together.
At last some good news – one of the doctors confirmed that they felt the infection was now ‘under control’. My CRP numbers had started to drop. Finally.
Though we were never told directly my medical journal shows that they had now confirmed the exact bacteria that were involved. It wasn’t one – it was two. A so called hemolytic Strep. A - Streptococcus pyogenes and a second called Staphylococcus epidermis.
S. pyogenes – a bacterium that causes a range of human infections, including NF – is named from Greek words meaning ‘a chain’ (streptos) of berries (coccus) and pus (pyo)-forming (genes), as some infections it causes produce pus. Under the right microscope it literally looks like a little chain of berries stuck together. Up to 5% of adults carry it around on their skin or other places on their body without even knowing. It doesn’t make everyone sick. I was unlucky.
Staph. epidermis is also commonly found on our skin or sweat glands. I’m sure you know someone who has a little more body odor than you’d perhaps like? Well, it’s this little bug that’s responsible for the production of that odor through perspiration.
Somehow both these two had made it from the outside to the inside of my body and then run riot. I had no cuts. No obvious abrasions. How they got in will always be a mystery. Closely followed by the mystery of why my immune system failed to react to contain them.
28 DEC 2022 @ 18.06 She’s still unconscious and will be kept under until tomorrow when they hope to take her off the respirator. We’ll go in again tomorrow morning and see how things are going. She will have to have at least another couple of operations over the next couple of weeks so she’s not coming home anytime soon. Kim
They spent hours that day trying to get me to wake up. Even after a long period with no propofol and fentanyl I was still not waking up. I’m a sensitive soul when it comes to any drug that can even have a slight effect of making you feel drowsy.
Give me an old-fashioned antihistamine (the kind of medicine you take for allergic reactions such as hay fever) and I’ll be out for the count an entire day. Every time I sit down, I’ll be asleep in seconds. I remember one particular summer school trip where we spent an entire week travelling by bus to different places of ‘interest’. It became a standing joke to time just how fast I passed out as we drove off. But for many people these any-allergy drugs have little or no effect and they’ll be their usual bright and breezy selves.
It’s no surprise they couldn’t wake me up after giving me such incredibly powerful drugs.
They gave up. Deciding to keep me unconscious for a while longer.
And promised to try again the next day…
If this post made you feel something then I’d love it if you would click on the heart and add a comment about what resonated for you – it means a lot to me to hear from each of you.
If you would also be kind enough to share it that will help more people find Hold My Hand and learn more about these awful infections. Maybe one day that knowledge will save a life.
Thank you!
If you missed any previous chapters from the book then you can find them easily on my website – click HERE and it will take you directly to the webpage dedicated to the book where you can read any previous chapters that you might have missed.
Every THURSDAY I’ll continue to share my ‘book in parts’ - Hold My Hand: A Journey Back to Life - chapter by chapter. I’m so excited to finally share it with all of you.
Next week I’ll be posting Chapter 5. 29.Dec.2022 - do they manage to wake me up? And if so, what kind of living nightmare am I waking up to?
Again, reading with my heart in my mouth, Jacqui, and astonished by the resilience of the human body.
Petrifying Jacqui !!! So glad you had such a supportive partner who was supporting you from the outside and making sure things got gone done.