The Summer of 2007

I want to begin by explaining how I came to be here and what has happened to me in the last 6 months. This first post will be about the summer of 2007 and the two months leading up to my admission to hospital and in the next few days I will bring you up to date to the present day. Once I am up to date I will post regularly as a proper blog.


I am a 20 year old student and in June 2007 had just finished my first year of Psychology at Aston Uni. I was having the time of my life and felt totally fit and healthy. The photo on the right is me and my friends Laura and Rachel from Uni, in the last week of term. I am the one in the yellow top! A few people had commented that I had lost some weight but I never saw that as a bad thing! I came home from uni and planned to work my way through the summer at my local golf and country club. However I soon came down with a mouth infection, followed by tonsillitis, a persistent cough, heavy night sweats and gradually severe breathing difficulties. The GP finally decided to send me for a chest xray at the hospital. This was booked for a Tuesday but the Saturday before my breathing got really bad.

We finally decided enough was enough and went up to A&E on Saturday 11th August 2007, I know because it was the first day of the football season and I was wishing I was sat at home watching Stevie. G’s winner against Villa! Anyway after a long wait we were called in, the doctor we saw said that I had tonsillitis still and that my tonsils were enlarged and they were stopping me from breathing properly. He said there was no need to have a chest x-ray and to cancel the one we had booked. I was prescribed antibiotics and sent home.

In the following week we visited the GP again, he said he didn’t think my tonsils were enlarged and said if things didn’t improve he would book another x-ray. By the following Sunday (my birthday) things hadn’t got any better. We were planning to go up to Liverpool for the day on the Monday even though I could barely breathe we thought maybe I could just look around the Liverpool FC club shop. However things hadn’t improved and I was still struggling to get up the stairs. We all agreed that instead of going to Liverpool we would have to go back to A&E. We would have gone on the Sunday but I refused to go on my birthday!!

So on Monday 20th August we returned to A&E at Burton Queens Hospital. The doctor we saw this time sent me for a chest x-ray straight away. When it came back I was admitted to hospital. I had an ECG and various blood and urine tests done. The initial diagnosis was that of pneumonia. However within a few hours they were unsure. They called some other doctors in and it was soon clear that actually they didn’t know what was wrong. I was admitted to ward 3 after lots of waiting around, I was in my own little room and I was pretty much left alone for the rest of the day. I remember crying a lot and being pretty scared as I’d never been in hospital before and I had no idea what was wrong with me. I was told that I would be having a CT scan the following day. Visiting times were 2-4 and 6-8 and so my parents and sister visited during those times. I spent most of the time on ward 3 which was only a couple of days reading Jodi Picout’s Tenth Circle.

The picture above is me in the last week of term at uni, I knew I'd lost weight as the shorts i am wearing belong to my sister and are size 10, im usually a size 12 and occasionally a 14 depending on the shop!

So that brings me up to the 21st August 2007.....