The Story and How It Begins (Part One)

I've got to go way back in order to go forward. This is often true in life when we need to self-correct or when we need to see a moment in time in its true context.

For me, it started in Niagara Falls where I had been booked to do a two day training session. I went to do the training knowing I was unwell, but not knowing that I was dangerously so. During the afternoon of the first day something really weird happened. My tongue went rigid and I was talking 'around' my tongue rather than with it. Then my mouth dried up completely causing almost physical pain. I drank water and kept going. I finished the day. The next morning I knew I had to get home.

I slept overnight in my own bed and then went to the hospital. I had a huge infection on my right leg, I won't describe it to you but it was something I've never had before and it looked really weird. I got into the hospital and then in to see a doctor. From the moment of seeing the doctor and being in a ward with antibiotics being pumped into me took about 13 minutes. This was serious.

Nearly a week later I talk myself out of the hospital. No one is doing anything except changing IV bottles. Couldn't I free up the bed and just manage with the delivery of antibiotics at home. The doctor finally agreed but only, and he let me know this, because I obviously had good home support. Everyone had been impressed by Joe's regular presence and his interest in being trained to do anything that they did for me.

I was released to home care with a nurse visiting regularly to keep an eye on me. It was nice to be home but it was exhausting too. Everything was hard. Walking to the toilet seemed like a trek worthy of needing a Sherpa. But I was home and determined.

Later when seeing my own doctor I talked to him about the whole thing but primary in my mind was what had happened with my lecture. The rigid tongue and dry mouth and the fight to speak at all.

My doctor is cool, he doesn't know everything. He asked me if it had happened again since the first time and, no, it hadn't. "It was probably part of the infection, you were really sick."

I knew he was probably right.

Probably.