I never thought sepsis would affect me… until it nearly killed me | UK | News

Sepsis is a killer. I know this first hand, having attended the funeral of an old acquaintance a few years back. And in the past six months or so, it has been prominent in my mind after seeing the impact it has had on my local MP, Craig (now Lord) Mackinlay, who was robbed of his limbs.

Even so, I never thought it would be something that would affect me. But I’m writing this from my bed on the cardiac ward of St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, where I have been for the past six weeks. Barts is “my” hospital. I am under care there in relation to a hereditary and incurable disease of the heart (arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy), diagnosed completely out of the blue when I was a fit and healthy 28-year-old policeman, some 14 years ago.

Seven weeks ago, I was at home when all of a sudden I felt flush with fever just before bedtime. I felt a burning sensation on my back and between my shoulders, radiating through my neck, and I honestly thought I’d got a touch of sunburn from jet-washing all day. I went to bed that night, and it only got worse. Sweats that caused sodden bedsheets, those dreams of delirium where nothing makes sense yet they repeat themselves over and over, a fever that breached 41C and beyond, and nausea that led to vomit.

I’d had flu only a few months previously (proper flu, not the “man” strain), and it felt very similar to that. And so, to my eternal chagrin, I remained in my bed for five long and desperate days while my symptoms only got worse, thinking it was something I could manage with a course of paracetamol and a solid dose of water on repeat. How wrong. How naive. How stupid, in hindsight. By the time Saturday arrived, I was so unwell that I thought I was going to die.

It was a real, honest fear, and in the deepest recesses of my mind I could remember something I’d heard before about sepsis; a fear of impending mortality being one of the symptoms. I was bedridden and couldn’t move. Literally, I couldn’t roll from one side to the other, nor could I get out of bed for a wee or even hold a glass to my lips. My wife Naomi called an ambulance and, when the paramedics arrived, they took one look at me, did a cursory examination, and had to physically manhandle me out of bed before blue-lighting me to my local hospital in Margate.

I’d love to say that I can remember what happened during that first week in hospital, but the honest truth is that it’s a blur. A few things stick out, for one reason or another (being catheterised) and my blood results were through the roof with infection – sky-high doesn’t do it justice. I did indeed have sepsis, with a chaser of bilateral pneumonia and impaired function of the kidneys and liver.

That’s not to mention the heart issues that were to come soon after… and I was placed under the supervision of the intensive care team. Instead, I relied on my amazing (and I can’t say that enough, amazing amazing, amazing) family to fight my battles for me, to ask the questions I couldn’t, to apply soaking wet flannels to my head when the fevers came, to do everything that the very best of families do for you when times are tough.

Because of my heart condition, I have a defibrillator implanted just beneath the skin, with leads that traverse through my veins and into my heart. After five days in hospital, it became clear that the device itself and, by extension the leads, were infectedtoo, and therefore there was a chance that my heart was also at risk of infection (endocarditis).

As a result, on the following Friday (five days after admission to Margate), I was blue-lighted once more, this time to St Bartholomew’s in London who have provided my care since I was diagnosed with my heart condition.

Sure enough, my heart was indeed infected. This was a serious issue – give endocarditis a google, and you’ll see what I mean. They wasted no time in operating, removing the defibrillator and the leads, and commencing a brutal schedule of antibiotics every four hours, day and night, for four weeks (I’d say I know how a breastfeeding mum feels but I’m pretty sure my wife would give me a whack if I did).

I was so ill. So, so ill. But, you know what, after a few weeks of flitting between the high dependency ward and the cardiac ward, between chunky fluid on the lungs, chest pains like no other, a cough that never seemed to shift, fluid retention making me balloon up like the Michelin Man, seven transfusions and with a hematoma on my chest that is still bulging, things did finally begin to turn.

The fog lifted slowly and I learned something about the power of friendship. I am an author by trade and, with a new novel published last week, I’d been far too ill to do any of the usual promotional work that goes hand in hand with the day job. Instead, a crisis turned into something incredibly wholesome as fellow authors and book bloggers alike rallied around me to send Into The Fire to the top of various charts on Amazon. I cannot express just how grateful I am to everyone for what they’ve done, authors and bloggers alike. They know who they are, and know how much I think of them.

And so, what next? I’ve got another couple of weeks in hospital while I wait to see if the antibiotics have done their job, and then I’ll be having another operation to implant another defibrillator. Can’t live without it, for sure. I’m just so grateful to still be here, though. I was given a second chance way back when my heart packed up initially.

So now, I’m on my third life… And I fully intend to make every moment count – to see my babies grow up, to walk my little girl down the aisle one day in the future, to watch my boy scoring goals in adult football, and to write plenty more books.

I often think back to when I was that twenty-something-year-old copper, running around without a care in the world and feeling invincible. Life sure does throw some curveballs, but I hope that I’ve taken mine on the chin and made the best of my lot in life.

I can’t express enough gratitude for everything that has been done to get me on the road to recovery, from the nurses and doctors at Barts through to my family and friends and the wider book community. It’s been one hell of an experience and, who knows, one day it might find its way into a novel.

In the meantime, though, if anyone finds themselves with symptoms like mine, then please do get them checked out early… It might just save your life.

• Into The Fire by G D Wright (HarperCollins, £8.99) is out now