SEPTIC SHOCK, a shocker...

The doctor in Emergency expressed his surprise that I was still alive. This was the morning after I had been admitted in the middle of the night. At that age and the state he was in, he said, they normally die within a few hours, adding that I must have a very strong heart.

When I was admitted I was extremely short of breath and barely conscious. I was given oxygen and the hospital then wanted to know how I was going to pay for further treatment. A blood test showed that my kidneys did not function properly, and they guessed that my breathing problem was caused by pneumonia. This was later confirmed by a chest x-ray.

After clearing the financial matters I was put on an intravenous drip. A proper cocktail—antibiotics, liquid to prevent dehydration, a blood thinner to prevent clotting, and one or two more. I was also put on three-full-days of slow dialysis as my urea and creatinine levels were far too high due to my kidneys not functioning properly.

Of course, only much later, did I find that out. The first night in Emergency and the happenings during the subsequent four or five days in the Intensive Care Unit were revealed to me by Y who had handled the administrative and financial interactions with the hospital administration, and made recordings of the proceedings. On the photographs she had taken I hardly recognise myself... tubes and IVs, dark almost black blood going into the dialyser and coming out bright red, oxygen tubes in the nose, and my mouth half-open desperately trying to suck in more air. Looking at the photos now, I do understand the Emergency doctor's surprise that I was still alive.

When I finally started to notice my surroundings and the fact that I was lying in a hospital bed—still in ICU—I got another shock when I saw S standing at my bedside. I looked from her to Y and tried to ask how that was possible, but my dried out mouth and crusted lips could not form the right words. Apparently, when observing my confusion, S told Y, wait till he sees who else is in the room! And yes, I was nearly stupefied when I noticed E. For years she had refused to see me and talk to me, and now, there she was.

Communication was a pain. I couldn't talk as the words came out garbled or not at all, and my attempts at writing a cohesive sentence were not much better. I wanted to ask what had happened and what  progress had been made and started drawing a squiggly line. When that was not understood I indicate that I wanted to write,
I mant (meant) a a p r
   prooogress (with the "g" on top of the third "o") Scha^rrrt
     charnt
and finally, CHART

I remembered that before going to the hospital I had diagnosed myself as suffering from dengue, and consequently wanted info on the platelet count (thrombocytes, found in large numbers in blood and involved in clotting). This is what I wrote,  platatelets ? The platelet count had fallen to 22K (should be from 150-400K per mm³) but not because of dengue fever, but because of kidney malfunction, I was told.

And using writing as the medium of communication I finally found out what I was suffering from:  septic shock caused by pneumonia and acute kidney injury. I couldn't believe it. How could I suddenly develop pneumonia, and my kidneys were doing fine—urine clear and apart from the 2cm-stone that was sitting in the bladder, there was no injury as far as I remembered.

My last attempt at communicating was:
I wamt to savoe (with the "v" superimposed on the "o") this to remember the mame  (I want to save this to remember the name).

That was mid-September of last year. I have recuperated since then though still not sufficiently to have recovered the muscle-mass I lost. Tennis is thus still off for one or two months.