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This is the story of burning the candle at both ends and hopefully a lesson to people to be careful. Another title would be a week in the life of a very sick dentist (who is now all good!).
June 2014 will go down in my life as trying to be Superman with little sleep. It was a busy month with some dental evening lectures and an all-day dental conference, all in the bitter cold. Coupled with mid-week soccer training and Saturday games, yes, you guessed it, in the bitter cold, wind, and rain; was not a helpful to the body. End of financial year paperwork and some long hours at work ran down the body further, indoors. The icing on the cake was the occasional early morning wake up to watch the world cup and during the school holidays, jumping up and down, like a big kid, with my boys at a new trampolining centre, at night, and yes, it was cold.
I had played a soccer game on the Saturday 12th July and no problem (we lost that was a problem). I watched the world cup final at an Argentinian blowing club at 5am. Still Ok but by Monday afternoon of the 14th July, I felt a bit washed out and I had a slight tickle in my throat. The last patient had cancelled so managed to go home early. The morning of Tuesday 15th I arrived at work and was parked in the car park when I started to get the shakes which lasted about 1-2minutes. I got out walked into the surgery. It was not a stressful day and managed a short 15 minute nap in the afternoon. I felt OK and left a little early to go home and got an early night’s sleep. The tickle in my throat had gone but I was slightly muscle weak.
Wednesday morning at 1am I woke with severe stomach pain that was a no.10 on the pain scale. This came and went every 5-10 minutes. I rang an after-hours emergency doctor at about 2am. It had settled down somewhat but every half hour the pain would return for 5-10minutes. I took De- Gas and Buscopan. This eased greatly the pain, but I began to sweat profusely. The doctor arrived 4 hours later. She examined me and thought it would be best to ring for an ambulance to rule out any chance of heart attack.
The ambulance was rung at about 7.30am. I stated to get my toiletries together when the ambulance arrived 5 minutes later. An ECG (to check my heart) was preformed which showed it was normal. I was admitted into Prince of Wales Emergency Room at about 8am. An ECG was again taken and a blood test carried out. I was also had chest x-rays, ultrasounds of my stomach, intestines, liver and kidneys, for about 90min.
It took them all day to work out what was wrong as my creatine levels were high, (this means my kidneys were not doing well), my liver enzymes were abnormal, white blood cells were sky high, haemoglobin dropping and my blood pressure was falling. The doctor returned with a provisional diagnosis of Pneumococcal pneumonia of my left lung. The hospital was very busy, so I had to wait for a bed in the ER for a bed in the respiratory medicine ward with an isolation room. I was infective at this stage. That evening I was moved. An antibiotic IV drip was placed and a fluid drip to flush the kidneys. However, I was still getting the shivers and a high temperature.
By Thursday afternoon the doctors had a blood sample that they were able to culture the bacteria from it. This meant I had septicaemia! The infection was spreading throughout my blood stream. NOT GOOD! From this culture they found that Streptococcal was responsible for the infection and the antibiotic was changed. I still had severe stomach pain and, to top it off, wind pain as the antibiotics made me constipated.
You know you are in serious trouble when you get visited by the Professor and four registrars!
There is nothing worse than have severe pain on your own. Remember it was busy, and pressing a buzzer does not give you priority over anyone else who pressed a buzzer beforehand. A nurse finally came after 20minutes.
Next instalment – To HELL and Back – Part 2 – and BACK
Next week: Wairoa Special School Fun Run 2014– (Readers Digest version) – Fund Raiser