2010 had been such a great year, my wife's parents both celebrated their 80th birthdays and 60th wedding anniversary and my son got married at the wonderful Buxted Park Hotel.
On the 18th December 2010 everything changed, I had been to see my GP a few days before with what I thought was a chest infection, I can't remenber much about that day only it had been snowing a lot so my wife and daughter's xmas works parties were cancelled, this is what probably saved my life. I had got much worse through the day and by early evening my wife became very concerned so tried calling a doctor with no success so she called an ambalance as my lips were now turning blue, on arrival they took one look at me and said "it's hospital for you" I can remember the journey to the Conquest Hospital in Hastings the sound of the crunching ice under the wheel and being taken in to A&E this is my last memory for 7 weeks.
What happened next is from the diary my wife kept and the strange dreams and nightmares I had.
I was taken from A&E to ITU and put in bed 5 isolation room as it was thought I may have swine flu, I was put in an induced coma and ventilated ("for a couple of days" my wife was told) for 19 days. On 21st December the doctor took my wife and son into the small waiting room and said all my organs were failing and I now had sepsis and should I go into cardiac arrest they would not resusitate and my chance of survival was less than 10% that evening all my family came to see me for what they thought might be the last time. The next day the doctor said "a miracle had happened" and I was stable enough for them to move me for a CT scan which showed I had double pneumonia complicated with ARDS.
I was now becoming more stable and slowly improving, Xmas day came our first year in 28 years of marriage we had spent it apart.
On day 13, 30th December my wife got a call from the hospital to get there a quickly as possible as I had taken a turn for the worse, when she got there she was told I had arrested twice due to a mucus plug the size of a golfball but they had manage to suck it out, again luck was on my side as a nurse was giving me a shave when this happened.
The new year came and went and I was making slow and steady progress.
On 5th January I finally had the ventilators taken off and had a tractotomy to help me breath, I'm told I was awake sometimes when my family came to see me but I cannot remember anything until 6th feburary 2011 when I heard on the radio that Gary Moore the guitarist had died.
In all the time I was sedated I had dreams that I was dead and a woman dressed in black with a big staff pole was walk round the ward saying "I'll take this one today" and point to someone with her pole, then a bright light would appear at the door and they would open and they would wheel the bed out to a waiting train and take them away, this dream kept reoccuring until it was my turn, I told the nurse "I'm not dead" she said "don't worry I'll give you an injection you will be then" I can then remember going out the door and taken to be cremated and as they tipped me down this tube I felt a sudden cold blast of air and woke up in a derelict hospital in London with my wife standing next to me saying "it's ok they've got the money to save you"
I spent 88 days in ICU and wondered at times if I would ever leave, it's now almost 2 years later, I've had some setbacks along the way and have PF as a result of my illness but I'm still alive thanks to the wonderful doctors & nurses of ICU at the Conquest Hospital, Hastings.
That's what makes me the Luckyone.
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