My Whereabouts

It has been more than 3 months since my last blog post and as such I want to explain my whereabouts in a rare non gaming related personal post. Although there is gaming element, this post will mostly be about my personal circumstances and will involve sickness, mental health and visits to A&E (accident and emergency).

May is usually the best month of the year for me. As well as there being 2 public holidays in May for England and Wales, I always take the first 2 weeks off of work. In that time I usually get a lot of gaming done, catch up on any outstanding projects and generally put my feet up. This year however, my mother got sick with a chest infection, which when combined with her age and being a heavy smoker made her feel like at times she could not breath and was scared enough to ask me to take her to A&E. While there my mother was given some oxygen and started to feel better but refused a scan and intravenous fluids when she found out there was a 6 hour wait to see a doctor about her condition. It was already around 1am by this time and she decided to discharge herself from hospital. A few days later, my mother got scared again and again asked me to take her to A&E. This time the department didn’t seem to be as busy but there was still a long waiting time, however my mother was more cooperative and had all of the various scans and tests the doctor wanted, she was given saline solution (for dehydration) and antibiotics intravenously. I spent about 4 hours with her before going home as it was clear she would be spending the entire night. The following morning my mother was given a prescription for antibiotics to be taken orally and I collected her from hospital. Understandably she was exhausted, but after a few days rest my mother recovered and got better.

I do not blame my mother and I would do it all again if needed, but as you can imagine this completely ruined my holiday and what’s worse is that just as my mother recovered, I got sick with a chest infection which I presume I contracted from my mother or another patient at the hospital. By this time my holiday was over and I had been back at work for a few days. Being younger and a non smoker I never felt the need to go to A&E, but I couldn’t work and ended up taking 4 days off of work sick after getting a prescription for antibiotics from my local doctors surgery. To be honest, I was a bit foolish, I returned to work too early and really struggled in the days that followed, but I managed and made a recovery.

As for my whereabouts in June, after such a disappointing time in May my mental health had suffered. I recall speaking to my friend Jason about how futile various things are and I even talked about the ‘endless rat race’ and how difficult it is to escape. These are things that have always been this way for us and the vast majority of people, but for some reason rather than just trying to live with it the best that I can I was feeling what I perceive to be injustices more acutely than usual. Even though my mother and I had returned to good health in June, for the most part I wanted to seclude myself as much as possible and I struggled to see the good things in my life, falling into a fairly deep depression. I tried to help myself and took 2 days off of work before a weekend to have another chance at accomplishing what I wanted from my holiday in May. It helped and I started to put things into perspective and remind myself not to take things for granted, to count my blessings so to speak.

I was ready to make 1 or 2 blog posts at the end of June and began planning a ‘WoW: May/June Update’ post. On the 27th June however, while working, I started to feel a lot of pain in my side, I couldn’t concentrate and started to shake and felt cold. I finished work early and immediately had a fever. This was the beginning of a urinary tract infection which lead to damaging my kidneys making them only 30% effective, causing me to be hospitalized by staff while at my local doctors surgery. I spent 3 nights and 4 days in hospital undergoing tests and receiving treatment. Following that ordeal I needed to visit the hospital and spend the day 3 times for tests and treatment. Altogether I was sick from work for over 4 weeks, returning to work just last week. During the month of July there were days where I couldn’t stop being sick and couldn’t hold down any water, it got so bad that I had sores on my mouth and on my tongue from the dehydration. Most days I had a fever and would occasionally hallucinate. Once or twice I was deranged, which when I think back is kind of scary to me, that I could briefly lose all sense of logic and reality. I didn’t eat and I could barely stand up, everything was difficult. While it may be true that I nearly died when I had a pulmonary embolism last year, this July is the most sick I have ever felt in my life, and I have still not completely recovered.

While it is true that I am feeling much better than I was, I still feel tired and fatigue easily. I am spending an enormous amount of time in bed, finding it difficult to stay up or do much physical activity. My last blood test results show that my kidneys are 60% effective, which is much better, but the doctor I spoke to is concerned that they haven’t completely healed by now. Yesterday I had more blood taken for another round of tests, hopefully the results will show some improvement.

The one surprising thing is that even after all that has happened in July, my mental health seems to be OK. I am thankful that the worst of it is over and thankful towards the people that took care of me, especially my mother. I have started to speak with Jason again and can hold down a decent conversation for a few hours and have even started to game occasionally. It’s highly unusual for me to be sick as often and as seriously as I have been these last couple of years, leading me to conclude that there are some changes I need to make in my life so that I may lead a healthier lifestyle which I hope will help me avoid a repeat of what has happened. One change I have decided is to avoid playing MMOGs (Massively multiplayer online games). This is something I have hinted towards in various posts since I started blogging. I want to be a gamer who isn’t afraid to put down a game and move on to the next one, something which I find difficult to do when I am hooked on an MMOG. I believe this change will help with my mental wellbeing and also make it so I can more easily dictate when I play games, rather than having to play specific days and times to suit other people or in game events. Another benefit of this change should be that moving forward this blog will feature more single player and/or a greater variety of games, rather than monthly updates.