CHAPTER 1. Out of Nowhere
Hold My Hand: A Journey Back to Life
If you missed last weeks opening chapter of Hold My Hand: A Journey Back to Life then I’d suggest that you click on this link to read before continuing - PROLOGUE: Life is a Game of Chance.
I’ve asked myself so many times. Were there any signs that this was coming? Could I have sensed something? Did I feel any anything unusual? Was there a sliding doors moment, where I could have done something different, that could have given me the opportunity to change the path I was on? Did I miss the chance to head off the tornado that was about to hit us? Could I have saved myself, and those most dear to me, from the heartache and pain that was about to explode in our lives.
The day before ‘it’ all started was a totally normal day. I had just about competed my recovery from major back surgery that I’d had a little over three months earlier. I was so scared about that spinal fusion surgery – yet in hindsight it was nothing in comparison to what would happen next. I’d bounced back from it far easier than I’d expected. Everything had gone to precisely to plan. There had been no surprises and no major setbacks. I’d flown through it all.
I was back in the pool, my happy place, and feeling fit and strong. During my recovery from that surgery the water was the perfect support for my healing spine. I’d swum 15km (around nine miles) in the seven days leading up to what would soon seem like the end of my world. The pool was my sanctuary – a place of calm. Somewhere that had helped balance the copious quantities of stress generated by my corporate job over the years.
On 22nd December 2022 I went to the pool at lunchtime as usual. I cruised through two and a half kilometers. Nothing felt different or unusual.
That afternoon I felt tired. That wasn’t particularly out of the ordinary when I’d worked hard in the pool. But it was more than just tired – I felt fatigued and worn out. That feeling when you just want to lie on the sofa, not move for anything, and just close your eyes as you sink into the cushions. It felt as if I was going to get a bug, maybe a cold or flu, or perhaps something more transient like a bad headache. It wasn’t anything that I hadn’t felt before at one time or another.
But I couldn’t lie there forever. Mum and Aunty Mary were arriving from the UK that evening. Finally we could show them the new house we’d built during the pandemic. I was happy and excited. I forgot about feeling tired. So I couldn’t have felt that bad – right?
We picked them up from the airport. Everyone talked over each other in the car home. So much to say. So many things to share. So happy to be together again. Looking forward to Christmas together.
Of course they loved the house. We nibbled on some tapas from the fridge. They got jumped on by an overexcited Evie – still only an 18-week-old ball of fluff. No manners and showing off with one too many zoomies around the living room – that’s the dog and not the humans! We said ‘cheers’ more than once – our joy at all being together was obvious. We laughed. We smiled.
Finally, we all crashed out before 11pm. I don’t remember anything being amiss. Still… nothing felt weird or unusual.
There are only 365 days in a year. If you’re lucky enough to live to a ripe old age then you’re going to repeat every one of those days probably 80, 85, or even 90 times over. There’s a strong chance that you’re going to end up with multiple memories, both good and bad, associated with each day. Some will stand out in your mind more than others depending on the specific life events with which those memories are associated.
For me 23rd December is one of those stand out days. As anniversaries go that day is one that I treasure. One of the most wonderful memories of my life. Back in 2007 Kim and I were away on vacation and enjoying a few days skiing. That day I stood on the top of a snow-covered mountain, in a little resort called Homewood, with a stunning view of Lake Tahoe (California). And Kim, the man that I loved to the moon and back, asked me to marry him.
That particular day was already special for Kim as it would have been his grandmother’s birthday. He’d hatched a plan to propose that day. I’d been hoping and hoping for months that he’d ask me – even though we’d both sworn we wouldn’t get married again after divorcing our first partners. But hey ho, never say never, and I was dying for the chance to proclaim to the world (well at least a small group of our friends and family) just how much I loved him.
I have a photo of that day, with our beaming smiles, hanging on the wall of my office at home. Reflected in my sunglasses is a tiny version of Dad who was standing there on his skis taking a picture of us just after that special moment. Dad missed the moment itself as he was busy enjoying a beer and bending the ear of some other poor German tourists about how many years he’d been skiing and his various adventures. We had to drag him away to tell him our news. It’s an extra special picture now that Dad is no longer with us.
Image caption: 23rd December 2007, Homewood ski resort near Lake Tahoe.
But unfortunately, as of 23rd December 2022, that day of the year now has another, not so pleasant, memory associated with it…
04.02am
Something woke me – I’m still not sure exactly what it was. But I know I glanced at the clock. The time stuck in my head. Before I could think about anything else a tidal wave of nausea rolled over me.
I catapulted myself out of bed and ran for our ensuite bathroom. Ten steps from bed to bathroom. (Yep, I went back and counted.) I didn’t even make it past the door before I projectile vomited a watery mess all over the tiled floor.
Remember what it’s like when you’re a little kid and you have that sudden urge to vomit and no time to do anything about it before it happens? It’s like an alien chooses that very moment to unexpectedly leave your body. I had plenty of stains on my childhood bedroom carpet to prove the point.
I felt overwhelmed and embarrassed. I didn’t wake Kim. I tried to clean up as best I could with the limited cleaning supplies we kept in the bathroom and washed my mouth out with water. That awful taste didn’t budge.
My head was spinning. Maybe I’d eaten something bad? Maybe I’d had too much alcohol in my excitement that Mum and Aunty Mary had arrived.
No, this felt different. There was none of the usual rolling stomach that accompanies food poisoning or a hangover. Just this uncontrollable urge to vomit that appeared out of nowhere with absolutely zero warning. My body was on its own mission to get everything it could out.
I crawled back and huddled down in bed. Then my attention moved to the pain. I think that’s what woke me initially. Think of that spot down in the crease where a bikini sits between your stomach and your leg. The kind of place where many people will experience a hernia at some time in their lives. Right in the middle. It hurt.
There was no swelling. No obvious lump. No rash. No break in the skin. No cut. No injury of any kind. Just an aching pain. Nothing to see. Nothing I could touch. Enough pain to wake me but not excruciating (yet).
I curled up and tried to sleep. And failed. I was up and down to the bathroom.
Everyone else got up and ate breakfast.
I stayed in bed.
I couldn’t keep anything down. It was useless trying to take painkillers. Within minutes they were lost into the toilet. I tried to sip water; aware I must be dehydrating. On a normal day I drink a lot of water - easily three liters. Partly aided and abetted by the wonderful drinking water that we have straight from the tap here in Denmark.
But nothing stayed down for long. Not even water.
Finally, late morning, I dragged myself out of bed. We had guests. I needed to be sociable. I pulled on random leggings and a long sleeve T-shirt and parked myself on the sofa in the living room. Hoping that curling into a fetal position would help that aching pain.
By now it was getting worse. I was starting to worry. I had no idea what was going on in my body. The concerned looks passed between Kim and Mum were getting to me. They were starting to mutter about doctors.
A little medical knowledge can be a dangerous thing and by this point I was running through the medical dictionary of possible ailments in my head. Appendicitis? Nope, wrong side of my stomach. But then again someone once told me you can get referred pain on the other side.
Something wrong with my hip joint? No, the pain wasn’t the type of thing you’d expect from something like a broken bone or even joint damage – it was nothing like the pain I’d endured from a bunch of different injuries I’d sustained in the past.
A previously undiagnosed hernia maybe? That’s where a little bit of gut pops through a hole in your stomach wall and sits like a little balloon under the skin. Nope. Nothing to see, no bulge, or feel at the site of the pain right now.
What about a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) – a blood clot somewhere that was blocking the blood flow into my leg. That made more sense. I started to panic. Menopausal, middle-aged, female taking hormone replacement therapy. I fitted the profile in terms of risk factors. A clot in one of the major veins going to my leg? I didn’t like the sound of that. The location of the pain was maybe about right. Seemed likely to be an aching pain rather than a sharp one.
You can talk yourself into almost any (true or false) explanation when you’re scared.
12noon
I called my own family doctor’s practice. Thank goodness they have an emergency telephone number so even when the main number is closed for lunch, they redirect you to a phone that’s always answered during their opening hours. I had no idea if they’d be willing to see me or if they’d tell me to go to the hospital. They picked up immediately and with no hesitation told me to get in the car and come on over.
Was that a sliding doors moment? What if they hadn’t picked up? What if they’d sent me direct to the hospital? Would the outcome have been different?
It’s only a ten-minute drive, if that, and it was lucky that Kim was at home as I was past the point of being able to drive myself. My mind was focused on the pain, and I had to do everything I could not to vomit in the car.
When we got to the doctor’s office, they’d just shut down their systems for lunch. They told us to take a seat outside their main doors, rather than in the waiting room, as they were taking their lunch break. What the heck? I couldn’t cope. Why?! When they’d just told me to get there ASAP?
Note. There’s no entry in my medical records at all about this visit. Nothing. I know it wasn’t a figment of my imagination and Kim definitely was there with me. We can only imagine that because they’d shut down their systems for lunch the doctor forgot to enter the information once their systems were back up.
We sat down outside, confused. Within seconds I had to ask Kim to go and knock on the door and ask them for a bowl or a bag. I knew I was going to vomit yet again, and in our haste to get out of the house I’d not brought any kind of receptacle with me.
They relented. Maybe they finally looked at me and saw the pale, hunched, mess of a human I was by that stage. They called us in.
One of the doctors came to get us. One we knew and had met before. We both exhaled – someone we thought we could trust.
He examined me. Poked and prodded. Talked through different possible reasons for the pain and the vomiting. He checked the pulse points in both my legs. Just like the pulse you can easily feel in places like your wrist and your neck you can also feel that pulse in the arteries that supply blood to your legs. They were fine – a DVT wasn’t the culprit.
We talked about the pain and the vomiting… such unspecific symptoms. He didn’t know what was going on. “Maybe diverticulitis,” he said. Diverticulitis is inflammation (with irregular bulging pouches or pockets) typically of the large intestine (aka the colon). A common symptom is abdominal pain and soreness or sensitivity on the left side of your lower abdomen. If it gets infected, then you may have nausea and vomiting. It seemed like a plausible possibility especially as I’ve had some challenges with my digestive system for most of my life.
He looked concerned but was still uncertain. “Go home,” he said. “Wait and see if you start to feel better.” I was so relieved that it wasn’t a DVT that I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I didn’t care that I still didn’t know what was wrong with me. I just assumed it would pass.
I’m not a big fan of going to the doctors at the best of times. I didn’t push. I didn’t complain. Had I stressed that I couldn’t even keep water down? I don’t think so. I didn’t sit there and feel sorry for myself. I just wanted to feel better.
We could call him until 4pm that afternoon if we needed. Then it was up to us to call the out-of-hours doctor number after that if we were worried and I was still feeling sick.
It didn’t stop.
4pm came and went – it hadn’t felt ‘right’ to bother him again. I wasn’t really sick enough in my mind. I would feel better soon. I must have said that to myself a million times.
It only got worse. I couldn’t drink (let alone eat) anything without vomiting. There was nothing left in my system.
I kept hoping and hoping and hoping that it was just a bug. Right? I’ll feel better in a minute. Just a few more minutes …
10.30pm
By now the vomiting had been joined by diarrhea. I felt deflated – like a balloon that has lost all its air. I could see Kim’s face was pinched with worry. Still, I didn’t feel as if this was worse than some of the food poisoning or other bugs I’d had in the past. I’d had a real doozy case of food poisoning when we’d been in San Diego a couple of years prior.
We went to bed. So did Mum and Aunty Mary. Kim and I just lay there. Me still curled up in a ball. Still dressed. Talking. What to do? Trying to postpone what was becoming more and more inevitable.
Finally, I gave in. I couldn’t keep waiting – hoping that this would go away. I had to admit that ‘something’ was definitely not right. But I still didn’t feel that it was anything serious. I had no appreciation at all of how sick I was rapidly becoming…
I’ve heard from other patients, with infections like mine, that they had a sixth sense something was very wrong when they started to get sick. I didn’t have that.
In my heart I knew we had to take action of some kind. Even putting aside the concerns about the vomiting and diarrhea I was starting to find it hard to imagine that this excruciating pain could get any worse. By now it was off the top of any scale.
In Denmark you need ‘approval’ to go to the hospital. It’s a weird system. You can’t just roll up unless it’s in an ambulance. You must call a special out-of-hours number and explain your symptoms to the doctor or nurse on the other end. Then they take an educated guess at what’s wrong with you and decide whether you should go to hospital, and if so which. Odd, I know. And before you ask – it’s a normal audio call, no video involved. That would be way too logical.
In good times it’s meant to be a fast service that balances patient load at the hospitals, ensures only people who need to go to hospital are there, and makes sure you go somewhere where they have the right specialists available to diagnose and treat you.
In bad times they keep you waiting hours until you get to the front of the phone queue. They guess incorrectly about what’s wrong with you. They see no need to send you to hospital. And maybe give you the wrong advice on which medicines to take. As a result, you can quickly be in a deadly situation in your own at home.
It took us 90 minutes to get to the front of the telephone queue. We crept forwards as the number of patients in front of us slowly ticked down. Finally, our call was answered.
Between us, Kim and I explained what was happening. The unexplained (by now horrific) pain, the vomiting, the diarrhea. But no – not much of a fever. No – nothing to see on the surface of the skin above which the pain was situated.
They listened and decided I likely had a ‘kidney stone’. Now I know I have more medical knowledge than some but even Joe Bloggs on the street has some idea where your kidneys are (up towards the bottom of your ribs on your back side) and the tubes that run from the kidneys to the bladder which is basically front and center. If I had a stone stuck in one of those tubes, I couldn’t believe that it would be creating pain way down in my groin.
Note. What I wasn’t aware of at the time was that for our region of Denmark – in and around Copenhagen – the guidance had been changed just a year before. Anyone with unexplained severe pain was to be sent direct to a hospital for physical examination. This change had been made after a number of NF cases were passed off as gastrointestinal infections or something else. People were told to take over-the-counter painkillers and stay home. They’d be fine. There was even a comment from one nurse on the phone about how men would know what pain was really like if they’d experienced childbirth. It was all so wrong. People ended up going to the hospital too late and sadly died as a result. So the guidance was changed.
By this stage I didn’t care what this anonymous voice on the phone thought was wrong with me. All I cared about was that they thought it I was sick enough to send me to the hospital. To see a doctor with a face. And to find out what was happening to me. It was another sliding doors moment that contributed to my survival.
The medic on the other end of the phone sent a message to our local hospital that we were on our way.
We crept out of the house, trying not to wake the old folks. And headed for the emergency room (ER) that was just 15 minutes away…
If you enjoyed this post please do click on the heart, add a comment about what resonated for you – it means a lot to me to hear from each of you - and/or share it on as that will help more people find Hold My Hand and my writing.
If you missed any previous chapters from the book then you can find them easily on my website – click HERE and it will take you directly to the webpage dedicated to the book where you can read any previous chapters that you might have missed.
Every THURSDAY I’ll continue to share my ‘book in parts’ - Hold My Hand: A Journey Back to Life - chapter by chapter. I’m so excited to finally share it with all of you.
Next week I’ll be posting Chapter 2. Christmas Eve 24.Dec.2022 – find out what happens next when we get to the hospital just after midnight…
Jacqui - this is a difficult read. Needed to create space to take it all in. It’s raining and I am river cruising on the river Danube. Time and space to absorb it. Aunty Mary xxxx
Wow this is both terrifying and fascinating, thank you for sharing. I’ve got the rest to catch up on still.