So the reason I haven’t been posting much is because, well, I nearly died.
Yes that’s right. I contracted a bout of sepsis last week due to an abscess formation in my stomach. I had had a gastric band inserted in me 6 weeks ago and the band had gotten infected causing an abscess to form which caused systemic inflammation in my body causing my blood to get infected. Luckily there wasn’t widespread organ damage and I went in early and targeted the origin before it got worse. Sepsis is a deadly thing and many have died from it due to not being able to recognize it.
I was lucky to have friends around me who recognized it quickly enough. They whisked me to hospital, stood by me, helped organize my blood tests, scans, pushed for seniors to see me asap and as a result, I got seen to rather quickly and treated symptomatically for the first few days to bring the infection and inflammation down before my operation.
My operation was an explorative laparoscopy, which meant less incisions and putting a camera in to see what the damage was. The damage was pretty extensive but thankfully there wasn’t any bowel or stomach ischemia…which is basically when oxygen supply gets cut off to any parts of organ tissue, resulting in tissue death. They had to open me up, via open abdominal surgery otherwise known as a laparotomy. I’ve now got a 6 inch scar on my stomach as a result.
I experienced another shock, post-op. Another medical shock. My pain wasn’t managed adequately and on the night of my operation, I went into shock from the pain and thought I was going to die. I was unstable, my vitals were through the roof and in desperate need of iv morphine which needed waiting for because a nurse couldn’t prescribe it. In the 4 hours of waiting, I felt like I had reached the end of my tether and just as I was close to giving up, a doctor rushed to my side and injected me with iv morphine, the most potent pain reliever there is. My pain subsided but I was still incredibly weak from the ordeal and took another day to recover the from the incident.
At the exact moment I thought I was going to die, something odd happened. I saw faces of people I didn’t recognize as I closed my eyes. I saw my granddad but he didn’t seem happy to see me. It was not welcoming and he just looked really sad. I felt like I had to get rid of that image, so I forced myself to open my eyes despite going in and out of consciousness.
One of the nurses freaked out and was by my side the whole night, only leaving till there was someone to hand over to or when my mum got to the hospital. It was altogether, a rather frightening experience. The sepsis and then the shock from the pain.
I hope to never be this ill ever again. What scared me about it all the most was how invalid I was and how everyone had to run about me, doing everything for me, from showering to helping me sit up, to eating and even dressing myself. It was surreal.
I’m lucky to be here today and I’m glad I’ve come out of it in one piece.
I think.
- Hera
Important!
Hera’s the chosen pseudonym of my girlfriend owing to hate mail received to her prior account and her agreeing with me that anonymity is important when you criticise people who send hate mail. She’s still the same old person! But suffered a lot over the past few weeks. Here’s her story.