Out of the depths

On October 14 2011, after conducting a wedding in St. Peters, I found myself in Ninewells Hospital, having collapsed in a pool of blood on the pavement outside the church.

It was pretty dramatic, but at first it did not seem too serious — even when I collapsed again in ward 15’s toilet! Apparently I had a couple of ulcers, caused by a fairly common bacteria. It required a routine endoscopy. Except that from that point on nothing was routine.

What actually happened?

I cannot recall much of it but my surgeon and my wife have filled in the details. The first endoscopy did not work. Nor did the second. Nor the third. Nor did an attempt to stop the bleeding by going through the groin. And so surgery was performed on my stomach. I needed 22 units of blood products, which resulted in my lungs not working. In the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) I had difficulty breathing and was on a ventilator for a couple of weeks. I had various infections which took some time to identify and treat (including e-coli of the lung). Anyway, to spare you all the gory details, suffice it to say that I spent five weeks in ICU, followed by a further two weeks in High Dependency Unit (HDU) and a further two weeks in a main ward, before getting home just before Christmas, where I am currently recovering and learning to walk and talk again.