This page is about Tom Ray and his recent experiences.
This is Tom's personal account.
Monday May 8, 2000, and I have been in hospital now since before Christmas. For five months. One December moment, I'm at home, sitting on the sofa watching TV, next I am slowly sliding to the floor - hands, face turning black, my body shaking. I want Lucozade but my wife, Nicola, who is eight months pregnant, grabs the phone instead; forty-five minutes later we're in an ambulance, then ten moments after that I am robed in green, flat on my back, under the surgeon's knife. Fate, rolling over and twisting simply, sends Nicola into premature labour, and across the hospital concourse, in the early hours, our son Freddie is born.
Pneumonocochal Scepticemia - strikes up like a fire in the forest, kills quickly, switching off the lights of life in hours, tearing limb from limb, leaving a shaking and humiliated half of you alive to grin and bear it like a wounded animal, or the price of war. It would have killed me that night, but for Dr Mallata's sharp thinking and his quick knife. Feet, hands, gone. Legs below the knee, gone. Mouth, nose, twisted, scarred and swollen. By chance, some weeks later, I catch sight of myself in a mirror and then I understand why our three year old daughter, Grace, cannot bring herself to visit. I wonder how much she understands and hope with all my heart that she does not feel abandoned. It is three months since last I saw her.
Last Updated: 15/06/00