Hi All,
I am 54 years-old and have got SPMS.
I was admitted to hospital just over 2 weeks ago. A few hours earlier I was up and about and there was seemingly nothing wrong with me. But then I am told I went and laid upon my bed and would not wake up for anyone and was practically unconscious. My carer came and immediately called my GP, who was here quite quickly, he did a quick examination and then told me (I was awake by now) that I had pneumonia! I was stunned and quite upset, as I know someone who’s death certificate’s causes of death are Multiple Sclerosis and Pneumonia! I was whisked into hospital and then remember nothing of the next 2 days, as I was quite unconscious while they blasted me full of antibiotics. As well as the pneumonia, tests had shown that I had sepsis. For those of you not familiar with sepsis, I have pulled the following off the NHS Choices website:
By the way, the pneumonia and sepsis were proven to have been bought on by an infection from my supra-pubic catheter. Although it is changed every 4 weeks, as I am prone to UTI’s, the catheter that was in at the time was only just approaching 4 weeks old, so it was just one of those things. As my consultant said “any foreign object in the body of a fairly healthy person could introduce an infection. Unfortunately, someone with MS will probably find the chances of infection multiplied by at least 3 or 4 times”.
So as you can see, I was in a bad condition and it took about 10 days for everything to clear up. Though at home now I am struggling for energy much of the time and my left side (my weaker side since my MS has developed) is very sore and painful at times.
I am naturally relieved to have survived 2 life-threatening conditions and hope I am like a cat and have 7 left!
Thanks for reading this.
Dave