On May 5th 2017 the curtain came down on my old life.
I don’t remember it coming down in fact I don’t remember any of the year up to that point.
The first memory I actually do have from 2017 came in the middle of June. It is of my sister sitting at the foot of my hospital bed telling me that I was swearing a lot.
We were to later discover that, along with loss of memory and lots of tears, swearing a lot is quite common for someone in my situation.
The situation I’d found myself in was that of someone recovering from a near fatal brain injury.
I’ve been told that on May 5th I’d been taken to hospital from a friend’s house. A doctor had been a few days before and diagnosed me with a bad case of flu but my condition deteriorated and an ambulance was called.
I had an infection called Chrons disease which quickly led to Bacterial Meningitis, Encephalitis and Sepsis.
My sister came to London to find me in the intensive care unit of St Marys hospital, Paddington. I was still conscious at that point so after a few days she went back home.
However soon afterwards she was called back as I’d gone into a coma.
I wasn’t expected to come out of it.
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Day after day she sat next to my bed as I lay unconscious, my face covered by a mask with tubes attached to give me life support.
She said she would take it in turns with the nurses to rub my chest as I was taking what they called ‘The Death Breath’.
She’d be pushed out of the way when the crash teams rushed in to bring me back to life. On one of those occasions she phoned our mother to tell her they were sure I would die that night.
I was in the coma for somewhere between 1 and 3 weeks (no – one seems quite sure) but the incredible medical team kept my body alive. I’d love to be able to recount tales of who I visited or where I travelled to whilst unconscious, but there is nothing.
All I know is that at some point I decided to come back to the body I’d left behind.
There were dark times ahead , times when I wished I’d stayed away, stayed dead.
However, it would seem I had unfinished business.
That’s where the music comes in......