So.
I’m typing this from a hospital room.
My body did a big oopsie.
Tuesday
I woke up with a bit of a sore throat and a chesty cough on Tuesday morning. Nothing that weird, really. I permitted myself a tiny lie-in before rolling out of bed for work. Normal routine: breakfast, bathroom, logging on, the usual.
That morning was mostly just a big meeting, one where I didn’t have to speak much. Despite this, my throat really wasn’t feeling too good, and although I could talk, I intentionally minimised how much I volunteered myself to avoid making it worse.
Regardless, the meeting wasn’t even over yet when I posted a message saying I was going to take the afternoon as sick leave.
I gotta give a big callout to the working culture at GDS, and in the Design System team especially, for putting a large and repeated emphasis on prioritising one’s personal wellbeing over completing work committments.
If not for that, my workaholic ass would’ve probably have just kept going and stressing my body for the rest of the day.
I had some lunch, slumped in bed watching Star Trek: Insurrection, downed Strepsils, Lemsip and an incredible amount of water, and slept for a few hours.
That evening, with my partner Taylor and me both in generally poor states (him mentally, me physically), we got some food delivered, ate, and basically just called it a night.
Except I couldn’t.
Laying in bed, breathing was just… hard. Not terribly hard, but hard enough that sleep wasn’t forthcoming. I couldn’t relax because I had to keep my mind active, working just to breathe.
After a few hours, I relocated to my desk chair, then the couch, where I downed more fluids and managed to get a few hours of kip.
Wednesday
Things hadn’t improved by the next morning. Talking was difficult. Eating was difficult. Drinking was difficult.
Breathing was now an almost entirely manual process, and any moment I wasn’t making myself breathe was a moment that I was struggling for air.
Still, I tried to go about my day as I would any other Wednesday, but even walking around my flat was exhausting. It was easiest to breathe if I just stayed seated, and that’s what I ended up doing for most of the day.
Towards the early evening, not having showered in the morning like I normally would and feeling pretty grungy by now, I decided to get washed.
In August 2016, I went to the annual Bristol International Balloon Fiesta. The event takes place quite close to where I live, at the Ashton Court Estate just across the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
Saturday night at the fiesta is the busiest time, with the largest crowds visiting for some of the highest-profile events of the whole weekend.
Great for the fiesta! But bad for me!
For funky engineering reasons, the Clifton Suspension Bridge has to close for the climax of the fiesta, turning a mostly-level 20-minute walk into a 90-minute trek around the Avon Gorge and up one of Bristol’s steepest hills… in the dark… on a cold autumn night.
Suffice to say, the walk home left me gasping and struggling.
The next day, I was horribly ill and still struggling to breathe. That night, in a misguided thought that I could just burn out the illness, I ran a hot bath and got in.
And for the funky engineering reason enjoyers: When the suspension bridge was built, it’s strength was tested by placing giant rocks along the length of it.
The bridge was never designed to withstand synchronous lateral excitation, aka, the resonant oscillations that bridges experience when large numbers of pedestrians walk over them at the same time. Having hundreds of thousands of people crossing it in the space of an hour or two wouldn’t do it too well.
It didn’t take long for all of that hot, humid air to mess me up something fierce. About 10 minutes was all I could take before I had to bail completely, now struggling to draw breath at all.
I recognised this feeling.
It was 8pm.
I’d rather not leave it late again.
I asked Taylor to call NHS 111.
Paramedics came to the flat and treated me there, just as they had done in 2016. Paracetamol. Oxygen. Salbutamol.
In 2016, that was it. I was told it was a chest infection and to call my GP in the morning to get antibiotics. I did, and I got better.
In 2025, not so. My blood oxygen levels didn’t recover much. The paramedics didn’t feel confident in leaving me there in case it dipped again overnight. They offered to take me to the hospital. I accepted.
Just walking to the ambulance left me wheezing for air.
Now
In the last 48 hours, I’ve had blood taken, ECG readings done, my tonsils swabbed, my chest X-rayed, and blood pulse, pressure, and oxygen saturation tests conducted every four hours, day and night.
I’ve swallowed something like three dozen pills, huffed an awful lot of nebulised drugs, and had some unpleasant injections that still kinda hurt.
I’ve also seen people who are struggling through far worse circumstances than I am. Hospitals are… kind of depressing places to be.
The jury’s is still out on the exact cause of my breathing difficulties. The current prognosis is that I have previously undiagnosed asthma, which was exacerbated by a chest infection, and that I probably inadvertently gave myself an asthma attack. Yay, go me.
My condition has generally improved. Blood oxygen has stabilised, and I can breathe without having to force myself to do so, but I’m still wheezy and still have a painful, chesty cough.
What was originally looking to be a stay measured in hours has already become one in days, and I’m still going to be in the hospital for another night or two.
Just like the paramedics who brought me here, they don’t want to send me away until they’re sure my condition won’t worsen again.
To be continued.
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