Pete's Eats

Today is the first day that I actually feel normal again.

Last Wednesday evening I started to shake, uncontrollably and violently. I was freezing cold and just couldn’t get warm. I took a warm bath to try and raise my body temp and it worked a treat but there was an unexpected side effect…

I didn’t realise it at the time, but the reason for my shivering and coldness was because my body was fighting a huge surge of bacteria from an infection and it had shut down circulation to my arms and legs to keep the blood for my vital organs. Having a bath forced the blood back into my limbs whilst trying to fight the infection and immediately made my heart go loopy and start pumping at about 170bpm.

I got out of the bath, dressed and went back upstairs to our living room (our house is ‘upside down’) and just got to the sofa before having a total whitey and passing out. I spent the next two hours in and out of delirium trying to raise Nete or Pip from their lovely deep sleep by banging on the floor (whilst trying to not wake Kate up!). Eventually I woke Nete and she came upstairs only to be faced with my delirious ramblings and promptly called for an ambulance!

Everyone assumed it was a problem with my heart. Fair enough I suppose because it was still going loopy with no outward signs as to why. I spent four hours on an ECG machine whilst the doctors tried to work out what was going on. Eventually, some 10 hours after this started I started to get a large red swelling in my lower leg. It turned out that this was the cause of all the grief, a bacterial cellulitis that was a re-ocurrance of a similar problem from the summer. Only this time it meant business.

It’s a very common complaint apparently but even now no-one knows why it hit me so hard this time. The upshot was three days (negotiated down from 5 because I promised to keep returning for more antibiotics and tests) on IV antibiotics whilst having to keep my leg elevated. I finally had the drip removed from my arm on Saturday morning and came home. I’m still on tablet antibiotics every six hours and I feel sick all the time but at least I’m beginning to get back on top of things at last.

All in all it’s been an eventful first two weeks of 2006. I hope it slows down a little!

Edit: I forgot to mention that the hospital doctors seemed to think that my body had been harbouring this infection for some time. This is why the last half of 2005 was such a ‘sick’ time for me…

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