Well, it’s been a minute since I attempted this last, but I think it’s only fair I share with you all what I felt I truly experienced from what has to be my most challenging encounter I have ever had to endure to date.

 

Back in August 2024 me and my family decided it be a good idea to book up a nice little all inclusive holiday to Korba, Tunisia. Little did we all know what was going to come of this eventually..

 

Join me as I share and take you through my story from between my eyes of what happened just exactly altogether to me, and it more importantly ending up nearly costing me my life all round..

PART 1 (THE DISCOVERY)

After returning back from a holiday to forget about in a hurry, (which I should importantly point out, had all the warning signals to begin with at the very start) I was feeling a little under the weather from an awful stomach bug that had managed to materialise within inside me 24 hours or so from eating our last meal at the hotel.

 

This on top of being delayed best part of 7 hours or so for our returning flight home, you can only imagine the discomfort I was finding myself in. Why the delay seemed to materialise for as long as it did I really don’t know, but there was no updates hardly regarding our flight status and whether we were actually going to be heading home that evening. It took me to moan a bit to get anywhere with it all, but at least we had our answer finally that we were actually going to be boarding our flight home eventually!

 

Our next predicament we found ourselves all in was getting back to the house after missing our train home because of the impact of the delays all round. Time was pushing on and I was in a lot of agony after visiting the bathroom more times then I was hoping to already and there being no signs of imminent improvement. What the hell had I eaten to feel so rough is beyond me?! Finally we get an Uber and we are home within the hour by 4AM!

 

Now I won’t go into full detail regarding what went on with me the rest of the week as you can probably only imagine it’s not for the faint hearted, and you can imagine the state I found myself in with being bathroom bound a lot more then usual.. It was nothing short of a miracle that I actually showed signs of improvement by the end of the week (or so I had thought) and returned back to work the following Monday. That day taught me a lot as I was clearly thinking I was past the worst of it even though I was feeling slightly worse for wear by the end of it with a really bad migraine behind my right eye and some slight issues with my balance and speech as well. I slept badly that evening but still attempted to WFH the next day, but I had symptoms of fever and slept that night shaking and cold in my hoodie, hoping it wasn’t hyperthermia…

 

The next 24 hours were when things really got bad and it was that I admitted to myself, I could well be in trouble here. My speech had deteriorated badly and my balance was really not so good. Before bed that evening I felt bad enough to say to Sophie that “I think she may need to call an ambulance at some point” as I really wasn’t feeling myself. Somehow, I managed to fall off to sleep, but it was only during the night where I needed a quick bathroom visit that I noticed just how bad I was feeling and somehow managed to stumble down the stairs without falling over, and making it into the bathroom just in time. I stumbled out afterwards and began to feel like I was on the verge of fainting. Sophie (my fiancée) had realised I hadn’t made it back upstairs for a while and came down to find me in a real bad way within the kitchen. I recall I had muttered to her that I was going to be sick and went back into the bathroom and ended up collapsing on the tiled floor afterwards, unable to stand at all..

 

It’s here when she called an ambulance as panic mode had taken over for us both. My knees had locked and I was in agony as I could not seem to move my legs at all and they were sticking to the tiled floor, digging in. Somehow, Sophie managed to make me roll onto my backside and dragged me across the floor bit by bit so I could lever myself eventually up our step that leads into the living room carpet space. This felt like it took forever to do as I could feel my whole body was weakening by the second. I could not muster up any strength to simply push my body up with my arms onto the living room floor step, so I managed to roll and crawl eventually onto the carpet itself and physically collapsed on the floor there and then from pure exhaustion.

 

Ambulance is going to be a couple of hours as I am seen as not an urgent case to come out to directly, can you actually believe?! So I managed to dose off into some kind of a sleep on the floor and Sophie kept an eye on me until the ambulance was scheduled to arrive. They took their time and eventually got to us 3 hours after making the call. Remarkably, I passed with flying colours on all of the routine checks they have to go over before being sent to A&E. However, with me it was deemed there was nothing wrong with me and I was just dehydrated massively. I was recommended to get salt dioralytes as that was what their intake was on what appeared to be the issue. There was a massive sense of relief for me in them saying this to me but little did I know what was going to be coming up next..

 

I managed to fall back to sleep yet again as by this time it was around 7AM and I had been up most of the night on/off and then all of a sudden I needed to pee, and managed to shoot up and stagger somehow (don’t ask me how) to the bathroom, only this time collapsing again on the floor and not making it in time either! Sophie was fortunately there again for me and managed to get me all cleaned up and called yet for another ambulance! This time I somehow remember managing to roll back on my side but as it’s so incredibly narrow in the bathroom itself I managed to keep myself comfy enough in there for the next round of paramedics who happened to arrive literally within the hour.

 

I am by now physically as well as mentally exhausted by all of this and the guys found me on the floor almost passed out. They dragged me back out and somehow managed to get me on the sofa so they could take all the desirable tests. It appeared once again I was ok, however I think by now myself and Sophie had seen enough to know we needed to go into A&E to get medically cleared. The guys were so helpful polite and understanding with everything and out comes the stretcher. It’s taken all 3 of them to get me onto it as I was dead weight to move. Anybody that knows me knows I am not the smallest of guys so kudos to all of them in getting me there and out of the door on my way finally to A&E.

Now I don’t remember much regarding the getting to the hospital bit itself, but I do remember vaguely what went down when I got there. Now with my type being deemed as critical based it was straight to the front of the cue when we got there and numerous nurses came and saw me to take all relevant tests, however none could designate what was actually wrong with me officially. It was appearing like I was going to be sent back home until I ended up falling forward off the bed I was sat on into Sophies arms. I somehow then came back round again quickly and this was where they announced I had finally failed. It’s a good job I did fail as the chances of me getting home again were slim to none and could of proved fatal! I was put onto a bed and being as I had no way of sitting up I was laid down and I was pushed along in a hurry onward to the neurological ward for some more tests which included blood test, blood pressure, additional eye checks and an immediate scan which I recall I was outside for a long period of time and it being fairly cold. This was going to determine whether I would need a lumbar puncture sample or not, to which my dismay it did. This is an injection into the bottom part of the spinal chord that determines what is going on with you as nobody else seemed to have any idea?

 

I somehow remember the next bit like it was yesterday. The surgeon was training an apprentice to find the right spot to needle me! It took him two attempts and I don’t recall it hurting either so he managed to get it right in the end. This therefore led to a trip to the acute ward and finding out just exactly what it was that had put me in this horrible predicament all round. Quite simply put, when the bacteria that’s infected you shuts down your whole immune system, you know you’re in big trouble..

 

It was explained to Sophie and my close family that I had been carrying a campylobacter infection inside me for best part of a week that was attacking my immune system all round and my body was unable to fight this off anymore without immediate urgent hospital care. This had all come from food poisoning from the holiday and me digesting poultry (chicken shawarma) to be precise… I was unaware of this at the time as I was clearly out of it by then and clearly not by making better lifestyle choices! This therefore leads me up perfectly to taking you all now to part 2.

PART 2 (HMU/ICU)

Now, this is where things took a real bad turn for the worse for me unfortunately. I was transferred rather quickly to HMU as my body was deteriorating a lot faster then I realised. I was in and out of conscience and weirdly actually remember some really vivid and delirious dreams still to this very day. Some were really quite scary, and others I can’t make sense of now, it was just that they felt so real and that’s what the brain is capable of when it’s readying itself to potentially passing over to the other side. It felt like a lot of the time that I was under water as well. They say sleep is the cousin of death, but when your down for a lot longer then when you usually sleep for, then that’s where the mind can clearly take over from there on in and you have no idea how long you have been asleep for altogether.

I had to be induced and sedated into a coma for the first time ever and don’t remember much of my time laid up in bed from there onwards. I was deemed in critical state and transferred immediately over to ICU as it was at critical stage for me all round. I do remember waking up now and then and hearing people talking around me, it was like though I was in a complete other world and couldn’t quite figure out or make any sense of what the hell was going on. A scary place to find myself in I tell you that much.

All in all when you’re in intensive care the staff amount is very much varied and frequent to say the very least. No nights are usually ever the same as staff in general within the NHS is always limited enough as it is. It’s rare you will ever have the same doctor/nurses daily so briefing is incredibly important for each patient on their actual status and well-being. In my case paramount to say the very least! Usually there’s a handover to night staff and the next morning for all those taking over, so usually you’re always in safe hands.