An update:

So i've been AFK for several days.

There's a good reason and i'm so sorry to anyone who's been trying to contact me.




So earlier in the week we took the kids to the urban farm and I was feeling... iffy. A little under the weather, kinda fluish. I thought nothing much of it, just "eugh, summer flu, great" and we had a nice day. The next day I still didn't feel too well but I just thought it was still eugh virus. The only weird thing was that the palms of my hands burned. Annoying right?

Thursday rolled around and I woke up feeling... bad. Anxious, aggitated, like everything was hyper sensitive. I had no idea what was wrong with me but my mental state led my mother to come over and take me out for coffee to "get some space" as we all assumed it was stress.

I went to the post office and I dropped off some parcels I needed to post.

Then we drove to the next suburb over for a change of scenery and had a little stroll but I was feeling tired and kept having these attacks of anxiety. We decided to go sit in Cafe Nero and have a cup of tea and a cake.
there I started feeling feverish, weak and just not right.

We left and by the time I got back to the car I could barely walk. My head was killing me and every bit of me ached.

We got home, I staggered upstairs to go to the loo and then into bed where I started to shiver uncontrollably. I was so so cold.

Still assuming it was a virus my mother left to go home and my husband came up to see if I was okay.

I knew I wasn't, I asked him to phone my doctor.

He did but they were, as always, less than useless. The receptionist was vuage and apparently didn't really seem to know what was what. She asked if I could come in for an appointment at 5. At this point I was unable to walk and crying in pain.

Husband said "er no." but the receptionist said the gp wouldn't make a home visit. So husband called 111, the uk out of hours medical advice service.
they chatted to him for a bit, talked to me for a bit (I wasn't much use, I think I was fairly incoherent) and told him they were sending an ambulance.

I was feeling nauseated, cold, my whole body ached, I was shivering and I couldn't string words together. It was bad.

Paramedics arrived, took my temperature (39.2C) and insisted I was stripped off immediately into bare minimum clothing as (paramedics words) I was "cooking my insides"

They got me to the ambulance on foot, sat me down, belted me in and started to ask me questions. Then I started to throw up.

At this point they radioed ahead to the hospital, they were taking me in.

Before we even left the street I started seeing spots. I was moved onto the gurney. (they strap your legs down wheee)

This was the first time I heard the paramedic say anything conclusive. He radioed again and said "patient, sepsis"

SEPSIS!??? how the fuck did I have sepsis!?? I hadn't had any infections!

We got to the hospital and I was taken into resuscitation (which is a worrying name for a room right?)  where the staff all said hi, the paramedic gave them my details "tachicardia, blood pressure dropping, temperature way too high" and set to work trying to stabilize me.

I was surprisingly lucid considering. They snuck a canula/drip into one arm under the pretense of doing bloods and started me on iv painkillers and fluids to bring my temperature down and raise my blood pressure.

Blood pressure kept dropping. Fluid bag after fluid bag it'd drop. It got as low as 75/40 and the staff were getting a wee bit tense. My temperature was up to 39.4C. I thought "this is it, i'm gonna die."
but slowly, slowly the temperature came down and the numbers on the blood pressure monitor came up. I ended up covered in wires. An EKG monitoring heart rate and breathing, a finger cuff thing monitoring O2 saturation, and after I collapsed after walking to the toilet they demanded a cathera (AIEEE)
It didn't go so well. My whole body was in a state of high alert so everything was hurting at like 300%. I screamed a lot and spent the nearly 7 hours I was in there moaning, sobbing and crying out in pain and discomfort.
Paracetamol is a shit pain reliever.

They gave me IV steroids to up my blood pressure, iv antibiotics for the presumed infection somewhere (they never quite worked out where) and god knows what else. 5 liters of fluids were pumped into me in an attempt to keep me alive.

They kept asking me if I thought I was pregnant or had an std (rude) and insisted on doing a pregnancy test. I told the woman if it came back positive I was punching someone. Thankfully the doctor who snipped husband did the job right, it was negative. He gets to keep his hands. -_-
They even, when husband arrived, waited till he was out of the room to ask "and no other.. visitors?" and i was all "why didn't you interrogate HIM omg!" (he never got asked if he was screwing around. Rude.) But no, they were just grasping at straws. Yay, I don't have to murder people.

at midnight I was stable "enough" to be moved to the ICU.

I was wheeled there on a gurney so it was a bit surreal and I kept sort of drifting out, waking up, drifting out. When I got to the room a huge crowd of nurses and doctors all appeared around me, introduced themselves and then lifted me from one bed to the other.

the new bed had a "bed iv", seriously, they hooked a big ol' bag of air up to it and hung that on an IV hook so it looked like the bed had an iv hahaha. Apparently the ICU beds are vibrating airbeds to prevent bed sores. Cool. They feel very soft and they hum. 

There I got another canula in the other arm, continuing my progression into cyborg woman. They also decided to insert an arterial line.
These things.. SUCK.
Basically it's like a drip, but into an artery instead of a vein.
Now here's the fun thing about sepsis, see, it inflames ALL your blood vessels but it also makes them all floppy as shit and rather like wet noodles.
Trying to then pierce a deep set artery that's now more noodle than artery? yeah, it's not so easy.
they stabbed me once, I howled. They stabbed me twice, I howled more. A nurse held me down and patted my hair which was pretty wierd mixed messages. I wasn't sure if I hated her or not at that point.
They decided i'd need local anesthetic. That's another needle.
I screamed.
they still couldn't get the canula in. Another local anesthetic, more screaming, more failure to get the canula in. They had to use an ultrasound to guide them.
After 3 local anesthetics and me struggling and kicking and screaming they finally decided they'd have to knock me out.
So they rammed an oxygen mask over my face which I screamed into as they continued to stab me in the wrist trying to find my damn artery.

When I woke up it had been inserted, but I also had an amazing bruise forming.
they stabbed me a grand total of NINE TIMES trying to site that fricken thing.

The arterial line would mean they could closely monitor my blood pressure. I dunno how, it has some magic in it that means it shows up on their computer screen without any cables. I didn't actually think to ask.
It also meant they could easily take blood without having to stab me any more. (mmm not sure it was worth that)

They'd taken blood when I came in, alone with urine cultures and couldn't really work out what was causing the sepsis, just that I was showing all the signs of severe septic shock.
Go figure.
they decided it was most likely a UTI, which is odd because i have had sooo many utis in my life, you'd think i'd have noticed if I was fucking pissing acid.

Anyway,

a night in the ICU passed without me dying, which is good. I woke up, tried to eat breakfast, was told to drink electrolite solution and threw that up and was bedbound because I couldn't get up without feeling really faint.

The catheta was still hurting me. I barely slept for the pain it and the IV lines were causing.
the second iv line was not great, the vein was SO painful and sore that anything going into it caused me to scream like a banshee.
So they gave up on the idea of giving me fluid in both arms and just stuck to making do with the one iv. The stealth iv i'd had inserted right at the start of all this didn't hurt and was the only one they could inject antibiotic into without me screeching.

Saturday morning at 11 I finally convinced them to remove the damn catheta and let me just be escorted/helped to a toilet like a normal person damnit.
I couldn't handle the pain any longer and those things should NOT  hurt like that.

They gave me some more ecg monitors, including some boob ones ahahaha. Boob electrodes man, I truly was a robot lady.


All that fluid they'd pumped into me? Well here's another fun thing about sepsis. As well as making your blood vessels floppy and noodly, it also makes them "leaky", so yeah... that 5 litres had to go somewhere and it chose the path of least resistance, out of my bloodstream and into my cells. Sooo my body swelled up like a balloon.
I felt like I was wearing a person suit a few sizes too small.

It started as itching. they thought it was an allergic reaction to the morphine they'd given me so gave me antihistamines. It didn't help. omg I was so itchy and you know how hard it is to scratch when you're  like 40% wires and electrodes and shit?

And then I got given my first hospital lunch.

Oh... dear god. WHAT DO THEY DO TO THIS FOOD!??

remember I hadn't eaten since about 3:30 on thursday, it was now Saturday. Sure i'd tried to have breakfast but I hadn't really managed much before throwing up.
So lunch came and I was ravenous. The soup? Watery and flavourless grey gloop.
but they also gave me an omelette which was edible and actually okay. I dunno how much of that was just because I was desperate for sustanance.

Desert was a yogurt, it was... generic and slightly room temperature.

Sadly this was to be the best meal of my visit.

while in the ICU my blood pressure remained low but was sloooowly rising. my aches had gone, my headache was gone and I was at least feeling better.
Everyone there was really nice too, which helped. I even forgave them for the knocking me out to insert the arterial line thing (shitty thing to do but they needed to do it)

That evening I was oked to be moved to the medical ward as my blood pressure was stable (low but stable) and my temperature was down. Before I left they removed my arterial line, I sobbed. The bruise left behind is... incredible.

I was wheeled in a chair to the medical wing a floor above.

The medical wing was huge. 2 female wards, 2 male wards and a bunch of lettered individual rooms. I got room K. Ooo la de dah me getting my own room. And an ensuite!

Shit view though. Overlooking the costa two floors below hah.

Sadly my care from here sort of... deteriorated. It was now the weekend and on a regular NHS ward that means skeleton staff and no doctors.
To their credit, most of the staff were lovely but with a good 40+ patients and only 8 of them, it was pretty ridiculous.

I was told I didn't need any more iv fluids.  YAY! I was now massively swollen and described my hands as "clown gloves"
My nails started to hurt as pressure pushed on them.

Yuuuuck.

They removed the iv that was causing me pain. It was useless if they couldn't put anything through it.

More bloods were taken, so more needles. And I got a nice needle to the stomach too. Anticoagulant apparently. Another fun thing about sepsis, it can make your blood basically turn to jelly. Mmm yummy.
So they inject you in the gut. They also do this just because of the whole DVT thing.
thanks guys.

I got dinner at this point, which because i'd been moved was whatever they had available.

It was some sort of bean and mashed potato shit with vegetables so overboiled they were almost grey. It was... not great.

Desert was a toffee yogurt, who the fuck eats toffee yogurt? that's disgusting.

After dinner at 6 there is NO FOOD on the wards. The catering staff lock it all up so if you didn't sneak stuff in, fuck you basically.

I didn't much want to eat that night anyway. i tried to sleep but sleeping with a drip in is hard, sleeping on a narrow hospital bed with a shit pillow that's pillowcase keeps slipping off is hard, sleeping when every 2 hours someone comes in to take your blood pressure and every 4 hours comes in to inject shit into you is hard.
suffice to say, I didn't sleep well.

Morning came and I was served breakfast. I thought "hey, they can't fuck up cereal right?"
I was wrong.
The lady with the trolley came and told me they had this and that and I asked for rice crispies because they're fairly bland and easy on the stomach.
She was literally 4 paces away from me. She took a bowl, filled it was cereal, poured the milk and gave it to me. yet somehow, through the magic of cursed hospital catering, in the time it took for her to walk from the door to my bed the bottom of the bowl turned mushy and the top stale.
stale rice crispies, in tepid milk, turning very rapidly to mush.
I took one mouthful, gagged and decided to pass on breakfast thanks.

How the hell do you fuck up rice crispies?!

At some point a doctor, I think? decided to insert a new iv into my left arm to replace the one they'd had to take out. He didn't want to use the one that was working because that arm was looking pretty dangerously swollen and red. He was worried about it and wanted that iv removed immediately.
so as he couldn't do my inner elbow like the other two had been and an attempt back in resuscitation at a hand one had completely failed and left me with a bruise across the WHOLE hand he decided to go with a main vein middle of the lower arm one (aieeeee!)

inserting that was not great. I cried.
He let me recover before getting a nurse to remove the one in my other arm.

By this point I was getting pretty hysterical when people came close to prod or poke me, the pain was just unbelievable. Everything was so magnified and I wasn't coping at all with it.

The new iv was flushed through with saline and it hurt but not as bad as the previous iv in that arm had and only for the initial few seconds. I thought it'd be okay.

it wasn't.

That arm started to swell as my right arm started to go down.

When the health care assistant came in to give me my antibiotic I cried every time he switched syringes and thoughout the antibiotic, it hurt.

He was so apologetic.

Then Pink Bitch turned up.

Pink Bitch was one of the nurses on the ward. She had bright pink hair and a smug self satisfied face.

Now, visiting hours weren't till 2 and no children are allowed on those wards, so I hadn't seen my kids in days and I was in pain and scared and still many many more hours to go till husband arrived at 2.
I was also really hungry because remember, I hadn't had breakfast.
I was swollen and sore and my head hurt again and I hadn't seen a doctor the whole day and was feeling pretty ignored. Nice though some of the nurses and other staff were, they did tend to only come in to cause me pain and I was feeling rather like a very abused lump of flesh rather than a person. I was covered in bruises and depression kicked in HARD.
With my stay stretching out to the forseeable future, I just couldn't take it any more.
I broke down.

I sobbed for ages before anyone came in. It was pink bitch.
She came over and asked what was wrong and it all came flooding out. How ravenously hungry I was because the food here was inedible, how I felt ignored, how I was in pain and nobody seemed to care, how when I asked people to stop because they were hurting me they didn't, I told her I felt like I had no rights and no personhood, I felt dehumanised and alone and I just wanted the hurting to stop so I could get some rest (remember also, I was massively sleep deprived)

She snapped at me that her OTHER patients didn't bitch this much, the elderly patients with thin skin had ivs and didn't complain that they hurt, that I should be GRATEFUL to be here and had no right to complain or feel miserable.
She was so dismissive and I was sobbing so hard. I told her she wasn't helping. She demanded I get out of bed and sit in a chair which I didn't want to do.
She snapped at me some more and I told her she had shit bedside manner and to get out.
She did. thank god.
But not before telling me I was ungrateful and implying I was overreacting and that my pain was trivial.

I ended up curled up on the floor crying when one of the other nurses came in. He helped me up, talked to me calmly and wrapped me up in a blanket on the chair so I could see out the window. He understood the mental toll of hospital on people. I NEVER deal well with hospital and day 2-3 is the point I usually lose it.

Lunch came and it was some sort of korma with like 8 teensy tiny pieces of chicken in and served with mash? wtf? It wasn't too bad but sauce and potato does not a meal make. 

Soon after the guy with the antibiotics came to give me my drugs. It hurt so much worse this time I screamed into my blanket.

Pink Bitch came to the door, huffed, made some snide remark I couldn't hear over the agony I was in and slammed the fucking door on us.
there's nicer ways to do that. Bitch.

The guy was so apologetic, he really didn't want to hurt me and agreed that the iv should NOT hurt that badly. I explained to him I wouldn't scream unless I needed to and it wasn't something I could control (something Pink Bitch didn't seem to understand, she seemed under the impression I was screaming for attention or something. Vicious cow)
You ever try suppressing a scream of pain? yeah, it's not easy and I really was trying.

I wouldn't let anyone near the iv after that. That arm had swelled up like the other one and gone shiny and red.

By the time husband arrived I was in quite a state. Thankfully a day of being left the hell alone by needles and having company improved my mental state.

Dad snuck me in some sushi. It was delicious.

Even though I was nauseated, I can always keep sushi down. But I still couldn't eat much in a go so I had to be careful about my portion control there.

That evening they decided I needed iv fluids. So the tech guy came in, I agreed to let him hook me up because an iv wasn't the same as the syringes they use for the antibiotics and we got started.
unfortunately, that vein was still being a dick.
every single drip hurt, and each drip after hurt more than the first. After a few minutes I couldn't take any more. He turned it right down to the lowest setting and still I couldn't stand it. I was crying.
He took pity on me and just gave me a jug of water to drink instead.

A nurse came and prodded the iv site and said it looked okay for now
later another nurse came in and decided it was not so okay, it was starting to turn red around where the thing went in.

A doctor was found to okay them removing it. I was told i'd be on oral antibiotics from then on.

I was also weighed. 7kg heavier than I should be! all fluid!

I could barely walk because fluid was pooling around my knee joints and making my legs stiff and heavy.
and every step hurt because the soles of my feet were swollen TOO, so each step was like pins and needles. Ow.

Dinner came, it was inedible. Broccoli was basically grey slop and the "pulled pork" was a dry powdery mess. GAG. I couldn't stand to even try to eat more than a mouthful. I already felt sick.

at 8pm visitors had to leave, so I was left alone for the night.

thankfully the night staff were actually quite nice. I went looking for food at about 11 to stave off my growing nausea but to no avail, all they had were some bland dry biscuits that made me feel worse.

At least by this point my blood pressure was high enough for me to be able to walk around unaided, though not for too long before I started to feel faint. Before husband left I started to get a migraine aura and I asked for pain relief.
it never came.

I also asked for the key to get my regular medication that I need for my migraines, the nurse said she'd find it, she never reappeared. 

I went to bed nursing a cluster headache and a churning stomach.

Come morning it was time for yet another game of "what food can they fuck up today?" as catering came by.
I ordered oatmeal because I had at least managed some of that earlier.
this time however, it took me ages to work up the courage to take a bite, my stomach was just so angry with me. When I did, I immediately threw it back up. Damn.
I caught a nurse and asked for toast instead, unwilling to have a repeat of the previous day.
she made me some toast with hospital bread which yep, is shit. She tried her best but the bread is like cardboard even before you toast it. I only could eat the middle least cardy bit. At least it somewhat settled my stomach for a while.

They kept asking me to pee in the cardboard hat things (okay they aren't hats but they look like hats okay?) and then forgetting they'd asked me to and be annoyed that I had and I was all "COME ON!"
so i decided screw em, I wasn't peeing in any more hats. HAH.

The shower I learned did not drain properly and as a result flooded the bathroom every time you turned it on. Fun. I made a dam out of my old hospital gowns.

I had a really lovely healthcare assistant that day, the one who made me toast. She was such a sweetie and pink bitch wasn't on duty! SCORE.
and I had no ivs in my arms overnight so I actually got SLEEP. they let me sleep for a solid 6 or 7 hours. Result!

So I was in a much better mood despite the puking.

A really lovely nurse came in and told me apologetically that she needed to draw blood.  I told her good luck finding a vein that wasn't bruised to shit.
She had a good look. My right arm had space without bruises but the vein wouldn't come up because of the swelling. The left arm was still horribly tender and covered in bruises but had a nice big juicy branch vein. Even so, it took a good 5-10 minutes of coaxing to get it enough that she could insert the needle.
I thought it'd hurt like everything else, it didn't. But my blood was sluggish and took forever to come outta me. She said it was the swelling.

She left with samples and I thought things were looking up.

Till my promised oral antibiotics didn't turn up.
Finally a nurse came in and told me I wasn't getting any because the doctor said I didn't need it. She didn't know why.
Well that scared me. I was told I had sepsis, sepsis requires antibiotics, so why were they stopping my antibiotics after only a few days?
I was nervous.
No doctors could be found though, so I had to just try to rationalise that it was probably a good thing and not incompetence, right?
but given their failure to give me pain relief the previous night and the hat pee thing, I wasn't feeling that confident in the overstrained staff's ability to remember shit.

finally another nurse turned up to explain.
My blood cultures had come back several days in a row with no growth, meaning they couldn't find any infection. At all. They had no explanation for what had caused the sepsis, no underlying cause at all. How very bewildering. (my dad said this is actually really common, go figure)
They'd run me through one full course of very strong antibiotics and another one for good measure and figured that was enough.

I said I still would like a doctor to explain what had happened to me please.

She said she'd try but they had 3 doctors for the whole BUILDING so it might take a while.

yeesh, 3 doctors for the whole building? crazy.

she also suggested it was better to wait till monday when my consultant would be back rather than the standin poor sod who'd been stuck with weekend everything shift.

Lunch came, it wasn't good. Roast beef, dry, leathery beef with dry, powdery peas and yet more mashed potato. Tiny portions too, like child sized portions. Bizarre.
All i'd really lived on till this point was mashed fricken potato. I mean I like mash, but it's not exactly nutritious.

Still at least it was edible. Unlike the previous night's dinner.

and I kept it down.

Dad showed up with some chicken and cheese and various other treats from the supermarket that afternoon anyway.

yay Dad.

My blood pressure had FINALLY risen to normal levels and started to go back to my normal hypertensive state. 137/87, not bad.

I could walk for longer distances but still felt so wiped out. A walk downstairs to the cafe took it out of me.

I returned to my room to find my dinner. A mostly empty pie made of gravy and one solitary small piece of meat and one measly mushroom. More mashed potato and sweetcorn they'd somehow managed to turn to a powdery slop. Nice.
the desert was trifle and it looked nice, but.. alas.. it was frozen factory crap and as soon as I put a spoon in it started to separate and congeal.
AIEEE.
it was powdery too. Seriously, did a witch curse this hospital? How can they turn regular easy shit into such horrible messes? I mean it's actually fucking insulting they expect people to eat this crap. their menu goes on about how much good eating and nutrition matters to patients recovery and then they serve you shit like this? it's not acceptable. It's taking the fucking piss.

their menus are so pretty too, full of lovely pictures of fresh green vegetables you're never gonna see and lovely bowls of desert that aren't a small plastic carton of frozen shit.

even their ice cream was gross. Like, wtf?

But I had no ivs in, the swelling was resolving, my blood pressure was returning to normal and while I still felt pretty iffy with a churning stomach and a headache and some massive swelling, I was thinking things were looking up and maybe i'd be outta here soon. Maybe it was all over.

Husband and I were planning what takeaway to sneak in to eat together.

A doctor came in. first doctor i'd seen in like 20 hours! She told me my last bloods had come back clear too, electrolytes back to normal, all readings back to what they were happy with. She said I could go home tomorrow. EEEE I jumped up and down (well I didn't, I don't have the energy for jumping, but I made happy squealing noises). then she said the magic words "unless you'd like to go home now."

whut!?? go home.. now? as in, right now?

She said she'd have to ok it with her boss but she'd go see.

and 10 minutes later was back to tell me yep, I could go home! I mean I was flabberghasted.
to go from dying to going home in only 4 days is incredible!

She discharged me within the hour and off we went with strict instructions to take it easy (I'm basically on bedrest) and see my gp in a week for followup bloods and stuff.

Now of course, it's worth noting that with sepsis readmission rates are pretty high so i'm not out of the woods yet. I'm still very weak, very swollen, sore and bruised and battered and feeling just not quite "well". But I have just survived a pretty horrendous medical emergency and i'm pretty damn lucky we have such a good health service and that 111 exists and can send ambulances. the paramedics were here within 15 minutes of that call, I was off to hospital before my mother had even gotten back to her house!

I'm going to have to monitor my blood pressure, make sure to keep my fluids up and resist the urge to do stuff. Which isn't easy as it's school holidays and I have parcels to post and kids to amuse. But my family have all rallied around to help out and it's quite heartening to see my long divorced parents working together to babysit my children, driving one another to and from the hospital and so on. They took my boys to the park together today, which is sweet. My dad has been an absolute rock of sanity for everyone, talking my mother down from her most alarmist (she always has been the emotional one) and making sure my husband and me and my boys are all safe and good. Mum cancelled a trip to cornwall to stay by my side, or rather to look after the kids while my husband stayed by my side. My husband thought to call 111  after my gp wouldn't see me rather than letting me just go to sleep. I wouldn't be here to tell the tale without my family and I really do treasure them all. I have been extremely lucky. There were points in resus when i genuinely thought "this is it.". It was terrifying. You feel so utterly helpless.

I still really don't know what happened, I doubt we'll ever really know, but I do hope that i can recover at a decent rate. From what I understand, recovery can be pretty slow. I'm already having a bit of brain fog with words and I have no stamina at all. I'm not gonna be running any marathons anytime soon.

But i'm alive. And that's what really matters right? I'm alive with no organ damage and with all the bits I went in with intact.

As for Pink Bitch, husband has her name and is gonna file a complaint.

Anyway, I just wanted to post this here to let people know WHY i've been incomunicado and why I might be a bit slow to respond to emails and getting stuff out.
Sales are ongoing, I have 4 parcels I need to get out that sold while I was recovering in hospital now, whoops.
Just be aware that my dispatch times might be a bit slower than usual as I need to get husband to do like, most of it for me.
And i'm finding myself more easily confused than usual so please do be patient with me. I WILL get stuff out if I haven't already and if I haven't gotten back to you about a query, just poke me again. I probably forgot because my brain is a bit of a mess atm.