Well that was fun!

Theo was ill for three days and then he felt fine. By Wednesday though Levi and I had started getting symptoms of the same illness. We didn't feel bad at first, we just had an annoying tickle at the back of our throats.

We were supposed to be going to Laura's Halloween party but when we woke up on the Saturday my tickle had turned into a bit of a cough and Levi's had become a sore throat. Mia's still only little and we didn't really want to give it to her so I phoned Laura to say we wouldn't be coming to the party.

I then spoke to Jeris who asked if we wanted to go to Ollie's Playland in Poole and as we felt well we decided to go. Big mistake. Levi ran round for about ten minutes and then started complaining that he was tired and wanted to go home to bed. We managed to stay for about an hour and a half then Jeris took us home.

Within about half an hour we were both burning up and showing all the symptoms of swine flu. I've had colds before and I've had flu before but this was bad. Lynda was also suffering from flu so we were spending lots of time sympathising with each other about how awful we felt and how nobody was looking after us.

Whenever I get a cold I have to keep a close watch on my asthma as having a cold often leads to me getting a chest infection and ending up in hospital. My asthma was fine until the Wednesday, then my peak flow started dipping a bit. I phoned the doctor and asked if he could do me a prescription for some steroids as I knew I'd probably need them in the next couple of days. Theo collected the prescription at 7pm and my brother drove him round trying to find a chemist but they couldn't find one open so I asked him to take it home and get my mum to collect it the next day.

My mum had been bringing food for us every few days. Because my dad has asbestosis we couldn't risk him catching what we had as it would probably kill him so my mum had to put the food on the doorstep ring the bell and then leg it.

Anyway, that night my asthma got really bad. I have a nebuliser at home but no matter how many times I used it it wasn't stopping my symptoms. I very quickly got to the point where I couldn't talk or get upstairs so I couldn't phone anyone or get the children to get help. Luckily Theo has to get up at 6am to get ready for college so when he got up we phoned the out of hours doctor again. He said I had to go straight to hospital.

I didn't really want to wake my mum at 6 in the morning so decided to leave it until 7. Theo helped me get upstairs so I could have a bath and get some fresh clothes on as there was no way I was going to hospital stinking (my temperature had been over 39 all week). Anyway I got out of the bath and got dressed at 6.45 and then the doorbell went. By some miracle my mum had decided to get up at the crack of dawn and drive all the way over to the big Tesco at Tower Park as soon as it opened to get my prescription.

She came in and I told her what the doctor had said. She said the hospital wouldn't want to take me in if I had swine flu and suggested I take the steroids and give it an hour to see if they worked. She then went off to do something and by the time she came back I was really struggling to breath and had turned a lovely colour. My hands looked like a corpses hands, they were all dark and my nails looked all yellow and nasty.

She phoned the doctor again and this time they said to call an ambulance. A few minutes later a paramedic car turned up. He came in wearing a protective mask and gave me another nebuliser with some oxygen. It didn't work at all so he gave me something else but that didn't work either so he called for another ambulance to take me to the hospital.

Levi really likes emergency vehicles so was very excited by all the commotion. They got him to hold the oxygen when they took me out to the ambulance and as he was walking along he said 'this is the best day of my life'.

They gave me yet another nebuliser in the ambulance again with no effect. When we got to the hospital they put me in a little isolation room and everyone who came in and out had to wear mask, gloves and an apron. They gave me all sorts of different drugs to try and get my airways open but nothing worked. My oxygen levels got lower and lower eventually hitting 71%. My heart was also very fast so they put me on a heart monitor. After a couple of hours the doctor came in and said they were going to move me to resus.

There were two other patients in the resus room and as you can imagine they were very unwell. Well because of the risk of infection from me they made the other patients put on protective masks and they had to isolate the whole resus room. All the doctors had to wear protective clothing and when the other patients were moved out of resus they had to be kept in isolation too. I even heard them talking about having to close the department.

As you can imagine I felt awful. The A&E staff have enough to do without having to spend all that extra time taking precautions.

Anyway they gave me a drip with magnesium in it which worked wonders and they put me on some high pressure oxygen so by 6.30 that night I was well enough to go up to a ward. They did an x-ray and told me I had pneumonia and if I hadn't come in when I did I might not have seen another day.

The next day the doctor said how much better I looked and he decided to turn the oxygen down. Within a couple of hours I was struggling to breath again. They then moved me down to the acute admissions unit where I continued to have breathing difficulties. When the doctor came round on Saturday morning he called an intensive care doctor to come and assess me. Needless to say that was really scary. She walked in dressed in a dark blue uniform and said she was an anaesthetist from intensive care. I had visions of them saying they'd have to knock me out and put me on a ventilator. They'd called her because my breathing was so fast and my oxygen levels were getting really low again.

Thankfully she decided I hadn't quite reached the point where I needed their help and that I'd be better off where I was. She then put me back on the high pressure oxygen again. The doctor came back later to tell me I didn't have swine flu after all.

I've been in hospital loads of times before with my asthma but I've never had an episode like this where the drugs haven't worked and where I've needed constant oxygen. It was rather frightening, I kept thinking about what would happen to the boys if I didn't make it home. I also thought about my faith and how sloppy it is sometimes. I'm about to start temple preparation classes but my life is far from temple worthy at the moment. As I lay there realising that life really is too short I decided to put my life in order.

On Sunday evening Bishop Kenchington came to give me a blessing. As soon as he put his hands on my head I felt a great sense of peace and knew that everything would be ok.

When the doctor came in on Monday I was feeling much better so guess what..........
he took the oxygen away. He was about to leave the room so I asked him if I was ok with no oxygen at all. He said 'no you'll be fine' but then he thought about it for a minute and decided to check my oxygen levels again. I'd only been off the oxygen for about 5 minutes and they'd dropped really low again so the doctor made the very sensible decision to put me back on the oxygen again.

Later that day they moved me up to the respiratory ward. I was put into a bay with 4 other women and a short while later we were joined by another nice lady. We all got chatting(as much as you can when 4 of you are oxygen dependant). It was quite funny at times listening to our coughing chorus. 2 of the ladies had the same rare lung disease, me and another lady were the asthmatic representatives, one lady had a heart problem and had had a chest infection and the other lady Angela had lung cancer and was waiting for a chest infection to clear so she could be moved upstairs to start her chemotherapy.

They were lovely ladies and as the week went on we built up quite a bond. Then on Wednesday night Angela began to have difficulty breathing, the staff were in and out to her all night but by the morning she seemed to have stabilised. At 8am on Thursday she was sat up in bed chatting to us then all of a sudden she started having trouble again. We all sat in shock as the crash team arrived and tried to resuscitate her. We heard them say she had stage 4 terminal cancer and there was no chance of recovery. Then they decided to let her go.

We then had to listen while they brought her husband in to see her.

The staff were really nice. They kept coming round to check we were all ok and they brought the chaplain up to see us. He spoke to everyone individually and then led us all in a prayer for Angela.

Thankfully by Friday I was off the oxygen and by Saturday I was well enough to come home.

I've been at home for a week now and I'm feeling much better. The doctors have said it will take me a while longer to completely recover but I'm making good progress. I even managed to go out today.

I'm really grateful to all my lovely friends who visited me, sent cards and gifts and phoned to see how I was. Most of all though I'm grateful to my wonderful mum. Not only did she look after the boys for the 10 days I was in hospital but she also brought me fresh clothes nearly every day and she cleaned my house from top to bottom.