Coma, My True Story

Induced Coma, My Story. chapter 1

On the 13th of September 2016, I left my house and collapsed in the street! My next memory was waking up in a hospital room alone surrounded by machines. I had tubes all through my body, one was sticking out of my throat, I had five tubes in the veins of my left hand, which was bandaged, a tube coming out of my stomach which I assumed was a drain and a Catheter inserted in my Penis. I felt no pain at all.

I was naked except for adult 'Pampers'! I glanced around the room and quite a number of monitor machines were whirring away. I thought the 'bad guys' had finally got me and I was now recovering from my wounds.

I was obviously sedated, I must have passed out, I woke up when a Nurse walked into my room in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) She seemed surprised to find me awake and left to fetch a Doctor. I must have passed out again, only coming to when a Doctor walked into my room and asked me how I felt, I realised I couldn't speak properly, he pointed to my throat and I felt it myself and realised with horror that a tube had been inserted in the part of my throat inline with my Clavicles, (collar bones) This is a normal place for emergency tracheotomy.

He told me not to be alarmed and that I had been, 'Very, Very Ill!' then smiled and left the room. When I woke again the tube had gone but the hole remained and the only way I could speak was to place a finger over it when asking questions, a 'band aid' solved that problem.

I noticed a very large 'Elastoplast' all the way from my skinny chest down to below my belly button so I thought, logically, that I had been shot in the chest and stomach hence the large wound dressing.

I could go on with preamble for chapters but the point is, 'If you are NOT told you have been in a Coma you think you collapsed one day and awoke the next! The point is Everyone thought I had been told but in actuality, I hadn't!

My only hint something was wrong is when a Nurse walked in with a Christmas Antler headband with flashing lights, I mentioned that she must be a keen Christmas addict to wear such garb in September? She looked at me puzzled and said,

'You do know it's December don't you?' The shock on my face told her everything.

'You have been told you have been in a Coma for over two months, haven't you?

I suppose my lack of comment and the bewilderment on my face made her rush out saying she would 'Bring a Doctor.'

The same Doctor who had told me I had been 'very very ill.' Turned up and explained what had befallen me and that I had been in an induced coma for nine weeks. That my sister had visited twice when I was under, and they had a difficult time finding whom to call as my phone was locked! But had sound Simon's number on a scrap of paper in my wallet and had notified him.

The fact that Simon didn't know any of my family didn't help them much, it was only my sister, being unable to contact me for our weekly chats for three weeks, contacted the Police who sent a beat Bobby around to my Lovely House overlooking Mumbles Bay.

My Immediate neighbour, Liz saw him and informed him I was in Hospital and not expected to live, he then contacted the Hospital to confirm this dreadful info before phoning my sister with this dire news!

Like I said the doctor told me what happened but left out the fact that the cut-edge of all my abdominal muscle had caught the Sepsis Virus and it had eaten away more than an inch of muscle on both sides until they had been able to stop it with intravenous Antibiotics!!!

I never did find that until I went home three months later and put on weight to find all my abb muscles were 'offline', they didn't align together in rows!

They didn't expect me to survive because nobody else had in 35 years of checking in the Vale of Glamorgan Hospital Files until me a Gaul Bladder bursting, without warning, in the street, was 100% fatal!