Timeline as follows:
Wednesday: Wake up feeling lousy and barely get out of bed all day.
Thursday (Thanksgiving):
Still feeling weak and ill and that I probably should not be driving. Grand-daughter drives up from Stamford to Brewster (45 minutes each way) to pick me up.
Get to Thanksgiving Party, can’t face food so I retire upstairs to bed while everyone else feasts downstairs
Friday, Saturday and Sunday:
Try to pull myself together but still can’t look at food .
Monday:
I have arranged to take a friend to Rhinebeck (about two hours north) to meet up with her old School friend and have lunch at a splendid 18th Century inn. Friend does the driving and I manage to swallow about six spoonfuls of soup and three of Creme Brulée and I then drive the hour-and-a-half trip back to Brewster.
Get home and can’t stop shivering and shaking uncontrollably so drag myself upstairs to bed with the electric blanket on “High” and fall asleep.
Daughter phones at 9:00 pm (I am now roasting like a lobster!) and does not like what she is hearing and decides to drive through the night with the intention of taking me back to to her house. She arrives to find that I am too weak to get down the stairs and she can’t feel a pulse so she called for an ambulance.
The ambulance team take Blood Pressure and it has dropped so low that it is off the scale and there barely is any.
Next stop: The Emergency Room and then into the Intensive Care Unit where they stabilise me but keep me for the next four days.
Tests reveal an intense infection of e-Coli which has already got into my bloodstream.
(I learn later that I had literally been at Death’s Door and, if my daughter had not acted when she did, I would not have made it through to morning.)
I was allowed to leave the Hospital last Saturday and am now recovering in Stamford but have to return next week for the removal of a massive kidney stone of which existence I hadn’t a clue having never experienced any pain.
While I was in the hospital, they kept me permanently fixed intravenously to Saline and Antibiotic drips with the horrifying result that I have blown-up like a Blimp by four dress-sizes even though I ate no solid food for two weeks!
All this when I am supposed to be in Costa Rica on 5th January!!!
What complicated the clerical side of all this considerably was that I have no “Referring Physician” because I have never had any "check-ups" and don’t take pills of any sort — except for Malarone when I go Africa!
The Hospital were somewhat thrown by that revelation which is a situation which they seldom (if ever?) encounter!
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One week later:
Everything is almost back to normal.
Actually eating, last Thursday, the first solid food that I have eaten in the past two weeks (I have been living on water!) has made a miraculous difference. What a surprise?!
We have just been out to a shoe shop to get me some new Trainers/Hiking Shoes so that I can start getting fit for the 10-day Costa Rican expedition.
I had never realised just how dangerous e-coli can be; and how really quickly fatal septicaemia can set in.
Frightening!
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Follow-up:
In this area, the Health Authorities send a visiting Nurse to check-up on recent hospital patients.
This rather serious woman came yesterday and then telephoned my daughter after her visit to report that I was in excellent condition physically — but she was concerned about my mental capacity.
My daughter was distinctly puzzled by this.
It seems that the Nurse thought I must be Delusional because I had explained that the idea of sending a Physiotherapist to visit me was a great idea because there was considerable work to be done to get me fit for a ten-day trek in the Costa Rican Rain-forest at the beginning of January.
My daughter was able to assure her that Costa Rica was no "hallucination" but was entirely real; and the trip was fully booked and confirmed!
We are all still giggling uncontrollably over the Nurse's assessment!
