How alarming it was, how uncomfortable it was to see me so completely changed, sitting in a stuffy hospital room while I tearfully apologized for who I was. It wasn’t until later that I realized how awkward it was and how important that particular friend was. He had his own troubles and wanted to escape from them.
My anxiety relentlessly repeated the same themes. I’m afraid I’ll be sick for years. That I would lose my job. I thought I would never have the clarity of mind to write again. That I wouldn’t be able to take care of my daughter or have another child. Will Ellie leave me or drive me away? That my incurable anxiety would cause all of these things. Other times, my anxiety became completely disconnected from these specifics and became just anxiety itself. This is anxiety in its purest and most concentrated form, an abstraction that has little to do with the world around me, every time I call into work I look out the window and watch the boy kicking the ball. It was as prevalent and absolute as ever. I say I won’t go in.
I desperately clung to the hope that the citalopram would work. Each day I took the drug brought me one day closer to the point in 3-4 weeks when this feeling might start to lessen. However, I was scared of what else the pills might do to me, and this became a new detrimental element to my anxiety. My doctor said the medication could make me feel worse before I feel better. A Google search confirmed this and more. There were countless forums where anxious and depressed people reported violent physical side effects, psychotic episodes, and suicide attempts from taking Citalopram.
I spoke to my mother multiple times a day. Poor mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety were a constant in both my parents’ lives. I knew and witnessed much of this, but at 35 years old I thought I had dodged that bullet. That doesn’t seem to be the case now. When her mother came to visit, she lay in bed with me and put her arm around me and held her hand. She always talked to me, made me feel safe and reminded me of her childhood. She took me for walks around Ullswater in the Lake District and talked about her family’s holidays when her father and brother rowed across the lake to meet us. Since the weather was nice, my brother and I had convinced our parents to get a dog. Afterwards, I went to have tea with my grandparents. “Today was a happy day,” she said to me, over and over again, like a mantra, like a mantra. “It was a happy day.”
Citalopram didn’t help, but after seeing my condition, my friend Chris told me about Ativan, a benzodiazepine tranquilizer. The day he came I was in a miserable state. I hadn’t slept, so I was very tired and had difficulty moving. Chris himself was prescribed Ativan for anxiety. He was much older and had accepted it for decades. He suggested I take a break, but I was reluctant. It felt like I was already on a lot of medication: paracetamol, sleeping pills, citalopram. In the end, my despair outweighed my fear. I sat up in bed and Chris split the pill in half and gave me half of it.
I didn’t feel any change after 30 minutes, so I took the other half.
After 30 minutes, I got out of bed and went to the kitchen. My physical symptoms have completely disappeared. I made myself a sandwich and sat with Chris at the kitchen table and ate it. The stiffness in my hands disappeared. There was power and energy. I felt calm, but not slumbering. I feel more alert and clear-headed, and my thoughts no longer conflict or overlap. The feeling continued throughout the afternoon and into the evening. It was miraculous. When Ellie came back with her daughter, I played with her in her garden. Afterwards, I ate the meal Ellie had made and watched TV together. Chris left me a piece of pills, 10 in total. “Make it last. It’s not an infinite supply,” he said.
My GP did not accept this and warned me, but the medication Chris continued to provide me with gave me great comfort during the worst of my fears. I gradually recovered, and my second child, a boy, was born at the end of 2011. I was scared – I didn’t cope well the first time – but he was an easy going baby, healthy and slept well. My anxiety seemed to be under control. I started writing again and one of my novels was shortlisted for a prize, which came with a large cash prize. The ceremony was held at Oxford University, but I started feeling unwell a few days ago. It felt like a bad flu and I lay in bed taking aspirin and paracetamol, barely able to eat and trying to stay hydrated. We canceled our trip to Oxford.
Prizes aside, I picked a bad time to get sick again. Our son was only 6 months old and our daughter was in first grade at school. Over the last few years, I haven’t been very helpful and have developed a habit of exaggerating my health. It felt like part of a usual pattern and Ellie was annoyed. But on the 7th night, she was in such bad condition that I asked her to call her ambulance.
At A&E I asked the doctor if I was okay. “You’re in the right place,” he said.
I was moved to an intensive care unit bed and an oxygen mask was placed over my mouth and nose. They put me on an IV of fluids, painkillers, and antibiotics, and took blood and sputum samples. X-rays showed that both my lungs were blackened with infection, and tests confirmed the diagnosis of bacterial pneumonia. My lungs were failing and my blood was starved of oxygen. On the fourth day in the hospital, I was put into a medically induced coma, but antibiotics did not work and my condition did not stabilize. I was diagnosed with severe sepsis and a few days later with Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), an extreme reaction of the lungs to infection (this condition is one of the main problems with severe COVID-19). ). The alveoli become inflamed and collapse, the lungs become stiff and the oxygen saturation in the blood rapidly decreases. At the time I got sick, the mortality rate for ARDS was close to 50 percent. The literature states, “As the loss of ventilation progresses, the end tidal volume increases to levels that are not viable.”
I was placed in a coma for 22 days.
A breathing tube down my throat pumped 100 percent oxygen into my lungs. An intravenous line in my neck delivered up to eight different medications from a bag hanging on a metal stand next to my bed. I had a feeding tube connected from my nose to my stomach, and saline and electrolytes dripped into my arm. Every 30 minutes another line took blood from my arm and sent it for testing. He has a catheter in his penis, a catheter in his anus, five sticky pads on his chest to monitor his heart, and a clothespin-like clip on his finger that shines infrared light into his blood to saturate it with oxygen. I was measuring the degree.
After 10 days, my blood oxygen levels still hadn’t stabilized, so I was transferred to an oscillator, a machine that provides a different, more aggressive form of ventilation. The vibrator holds the fragile lungs open as air is pumped in and out, and the force causes the entire body to vibrate. A cold blanket was placed over me to reduce my raging body temperature. My body was swollen with fluid and swollen almost beyond recognition. I was later told that these were the worst and most dangerous days.
