paulradcliffe.me

My Health Incident

I seemed to have everything going for me: Happily married, bought a house, great job, and super-cute newborn baby. Then something went inexplicably wrong.

On February 2, 2019, I checked into the emergency room at the Trillium Health Centre Mississauga Hospital with weakness in my legs and urinary problems. This whole incident probably started weeks before with the string of flu’s that hit me in rapid succession.

I was admitted to a hospital room and became increasingly confused. On the evening of February 5, I suffered a “Code Blue” (stopped breathing). The doctors and nurses performed CPR and managed to revive me. I then spent my next 6 days in and out of consciousness in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). There are at least 8 days of which I have absolutely no memory.

(More about the Code Blue in this post)

To save my life, they installed a breathing tube down my throat that removed my ability to speak or eat. I was being fed through a tube that went through my nose into my stomach. And I could only communicate writing on a clipboard.

Best guess from doctors is that I had some sort of inflamed spinal column that was attacked by my own immune system antibodies. Some sort neurological autoimmune illness, similar to Guillain-Barré Syndrome or Bickerstaff’s encephalitis, but not exactly.

On February 11 I was transferred to the ICU of St. Michael’s Hosptal for a plasmapheresis or “Plex” treatment. I am very thankful to St. Micheal’s Hospital for that treatment since it is rare and very expensive.

But, I had a bit of a rough time in St. Michael’s ICU: had a Foley catheter ripped out fully inflated, was threatened with a tracheotomy, got sepsis (blood poisoning), and pneumonia (twice). Admittedly, I don’t remember everything that happened at St. Michael’s because I was sedated a lot of the time. I stayed there until March 2 when I was transferred back to Mississauga Hospital on a wild Ornge ride.

(More about the ICU portion of my story in this post)

I had my breathing tube removed on March 3 which may have been one of the best days of my life. I could breathe on my own, speak, and start to eat again. I was downgraded from the ther ICU the following day. Because of all that time being bedridden I lost the ability to walk. My leg and core muscles atrophied significantly. I lost about 40 pound! A doctor told me most of his patients take 3 months to walk again from this point.

I spent the next two weeks in the Trillium Health Centre Mississauga Hospital’s 5J Medicine unit clearing up lingering medical conditions and starting some structured physiotherapy. I took to exercise very seriously. I could also finally eat real food again and started gaining back muscle mass. I made some pretty big improvements from barely moving my toes, to being able to stand for 3 minutes. 

On March 22, I was transferred to the 1D Rehab unit at the Credit Valley Hospital. A rehab unit has more focus on physiotherapy and rehabilitation than medicine. I started walking with a high walker on March 25 and then a regular walker on April 11. Every day was an exhausting schedule of therapy and workouts, but bit by bit I got better. Re-learning to walk was especially challenging and bizarre. It was a very strange and foreign feeling not knowing how to control your own legs.

I continued to recover at the Credit Valley Hospital until May 16. After 3.5 months, I finally left the hospital. I achieved my goal of walking out of the hospital on my own two feet.

It expect several weeks or months until I am cleared to return to work: I have lots of outpatient physiotherapy and other medical follow-up appointments. I may be functional, but de-conditioned and certainly not back to “baseline”.

I’ve certainly felt the whole spectrum of human emotion during this incident: Happiness and joy, anxiety, fear, terror, panic, anger, despondency, sadness, listless, sorrow, frustration, loneliness, and triumph!

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I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who has been so supportive of me during the inpatient part of my journey. In particular, I was touched that so many of my friends from the Mississauga running community came to see me. And I’m most thankful for my family, especially my mother and wife who came to see me in hospital almost every day!

An incident like this definitely changes your outlook on life. Essentially I feel like I’m already living in the “bonus round” of life. I’ve gained a gratefulness for things I used to take for granted, like breathing, speaking, tasting food, and walking. It’s made me think about what really matters.

There will be lots more posts about my time in hospital. I have been journaling every night of since I became lucid again, so I have a lot of new content for the blog!