Man's "nasty cold" turns out to be flu

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Watch as Aaron Clark from Sutton-in-Ashfield tells of how his “nasty cold” which turned out to be flu left him in a 16 day coma.

Transcript

00:00When he came into us he was in multi-organ failure.

00:15One of the doctors, when I did sort of come round, one of the first things I remember was,

00:21she said well done and we've not had many people come back from as far as you did.

00:26It's extremely, extremely life-threatening for some patients.

00:32Aaron was quite an unexpected case. He was 42 when he was admitted.

00:37I had a really close call. I would definitely, definitely go and get your vaccination done.

00:43Hello, my name's Aaron. I had a bit of a stay here not so long ago when I got the flu.

00:58Yeah, yeah, so on Saturday I just felt not even really unwell, just not quite right.

01:06And it was during the Monday, the Tuesday, I felt like I got the sort of flu symptoms.

01:16Again, perhaps didn't appreciate how serious it could be then.

01:21But yeah, on the Wednesday, my skin had changed colour and I got this sort of mottling,

01:29what I thought was a rash at the time, on my skin and that prompted Alex to ring 111.

01:35And 111 ended up ripping me down to the GP.

01:40And when I got there, they put a clip on my finger and my blood oxygen levels

01:47and they were, I was at 72 in the doctor's day.

01:51Yeah, that's pretty low.

01:52Yeah. So, well, she rang for...

01:54Well, she tried three different ones because she couldn't believe it was 72 and we were like,

01:58oh, this is quite bad.

02:00Yeah.

02:01A matter of eight hours from just thinking it was a bit of a nasty cold and being at home in bed.

02:06And yeah, as I say, eight hours, it was sort of in an induced coma

02:11and the situation had changed very much from what we thought was going on.

02:15Hello, my name's Phaedra.

02:17I'm one of the department leaders in adult critical care at Kingsmill.

02:22It's the intensive care unit.

02:25My team's been involved in looking after Aaron from his admission.

02:32And we're still providing care for Aaron even now, months on, following his discharge from our unit.

02:40He was very seriously ill with flu.

02:43He's a fit and well gentleman normally.

02:48He has no co-morbidities and developed a very serious form of flu.

02:59To be honest, I've really struggled putting the order of things together.

03:04Yeah.

03:05Even now because of the diaries that he kept and Alex was good at keeping the journal each day.

03:10And, you know, there were lots of people that were explaining what had happened.

03:15But to me, it was all just a big jumble of, you know, you close your eyes, all this stuff happened.

03:22And now you've opened them again and there's no way of putting it in order.

03:26Yeah.

03:27I don't, I can't say that I've ever had the flu.

03:29I barely think I've ever had a cold to be honest.

03:32Um, so yeah, it was, it was a, it was a shock.

03:36You know, how serious it can be and how quickly everything escalated.

03:40And, you know, from, from thinking, you know, I might stay in bed for a little while to, you know,

03:47being whizzed off in an ambulance and, and put to sleep, it's, uh,

03:52Vaccines seem to take the potency out of the, out of the illness.

03:57And, and, you know, so it's, it's well worth doing.

04:00Um, we've got peer vaccinators in the trust, um, within our unit even.

04:06So we jab each other whenever we can to, to protect us because, you know,

04:11we're a very, um, valued workforce and, and we need to be fit to keep our patients well.

04:19I think it's, it, it shocked a lot of my friends and family and colleagues at work when,

04:24you know, they found I was disappeared for nearly four months and I tell them I got the flu.

04:28Um, yeah, people don't realise how serious it can be until it happens to somebody, you know, and, and, uh, yeah.

04:36And it's not just the flu because then it was the knock-on effect.

04:40Yeah.

04:41When you were in intensive care.

04:42Yeah.

04:43I think that, that was really the worst thing.

04:45The, the, you know, the knock-on from being unwell for so long and, um, but yeah, it's, uh,

04:52He was put on a ventilator on a, um, to take over the work of his breathing.

04:57He needed to, um, receive dialysis on the unit.

05:04Aaron, um, has had a long journey to, um, to become well again, and he's still on that journey.

05:13He has lots of rehabilitation.

05:16When he came into us, he was in multi-organ failure.

05:20You know, when it's a really serious, um, case of flu, it can affect every part of your body.

05:28And it's extremely, extremely life threatening.

05:33For some patients, Aaron was quite an unexpected, an unexpected case.

05:38He was 42 when he was admitted.

05:40You know, I, I had a really close call.

05:42Um, I would, I would definitely, definitely go and get your vaccination done.

05:47So, you know, what you have to do.

05:52.

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