How it all started?
Over the summer, I went to India for a 3 week holiday. I'm sure that many of you know that when someone who hasn’t been there in long or never been there, the usual side effect is: getting sick . Like most people I developed really bad stomach problems towards the end of my trip and this consisted of vomiting and constant headaches. I didn’t really think much of it and I thought it was completely normal and that with a little medication i'd be fine in a couple of days. When I got back to Hong Kong, things got worse and I started to lose my appetite and I wasn’t even able to eat a bowl of rice. I over-looked this and continued to lead a normal life to the best of my ability. I kept going to the gym, played football and rugby with my friends and kept on going out. After a while I realised that I wasn’t able to run as much and I didn’t have as much energy as the people around me. Like an average teenager I didn’t stop myself from going out because “I was feeling a little tired”. A couple weeks after, school started and about an hour into my first lesson my teacher told me I looked quite ill, I waited for a bit and then rushed myself to the nurse where I ended up vomitting and felt extremely nauseous (Maybe IB did get the better of me and now i'm that guy that lasted about an hour of year 13….)
I left school and went straight to the hospital near by, they just asked me general questions and this lead them to taking a blood test and saying that they would call me if anything was wrong. Later that night at 3AM I found myself short of breath and I thought my stomach was going to slowly explode. I thought maybe the shortness of breath was linked to the fact that I suffer from Asthma but I really had no idea about the stomach problems. I was so pale that my lips turned white. My mum rushed me to the ER where we waited 4 hours to see the doctor. She saw the blood test results and said “Krishna your Liver function is looking quite poor, were going to admit you to run further tests”. After doing some tests, they couldn’t tell me what I had but it was suspected to be Hepatitis and the only meds they could give me was Panadol….
A week passed by in the hospital and there was still no confirmed diagnosis. Hospitals are really not a fun environment to be in so my family decided to take me home and just give me Panadols there. A week passed at home and my symptoms got worse, I started coughing out blood, couldn’t even walk 20 metres and my feet started swelling up. The vomiting and headaches also didn’t stop. I found myself at such a weak position that I couldn’t even leave bed. Finally we decided to go back to the hospital, waited 2 hours in the ER and then they decided to do a chest X-Ray and I was then put on an IV-Drip to give me a bit of energy.
The next morning I woke up and still felt terrible. My chest X-Ray came out quite odd so they took me down to do an echo, little did I know that this was when my life would change…
I was wheeled into the Echo room and my mum was with me. We didn’t even think it would be bad. I layed down on the bed and we started. After 45 minutes my mums face was red and she wouldn’t stop crying. The doctors had told us that I had Heart Failure and that my heart was enlarged. They told me my heart was working at 15% and that I was quite close to the edge of life. Immediately admitted into the ICU and the treatment started. Needles everywhere…. I had to put 4 arterial lines in (these were so painful) and I didn’t know what was going on. I thought this was all going to be fine and that with a couple of meds I would be fine….
An hour later the doctors came back into my room and started covering up my bed with some sheets, they then covered my face and I was so lost. They asked me to turn my neck and they started pressing down as they were trying to find a specific spot. Minutes after I felt a needle go into my neck and then it was an hour of hell. A wire half the length of an iPhone charging wire was put through from my neck and into my heart in order to put some strong medication to my heart. I couldn’t feel half my body…
To read the next part of my story, click the link below -
