Reni Eddo-Lodge

Reni Eddo-Lodge

Haemoglobin is a protein in your red blood cells that transports oxygen around your body. Understanding that we need oxygen to survive is primary school-level stuff, but until I was admitted to hospital, I didn’t fully grasp that it was that little-known protein doing the heavy lifting in keeping me alive.

There’s a morning in my life I’ll never forget. The events are burned into my retinas. I’d taken a blood test a week earlier and my GP, on receiving the results, phoned. There was urgency in her voice. ‘You need to go to A&E. Now.’

I was twenty-five. I’d just moved house and had had to push myself physically to get boxes up the stairs. I was tired. I struggled to shake off the morning grog, no matter how much coffee I drank. If I stood up too quickly, my vision would be blighted by black splotches. Sometimes I couldn’t properly form my thoughts into sentences. My usual twenty-minute walk to Sainsburys had been replaced by a bus journey that would get me there in half the time, because I was too tired to walk. I’d sit on the weaving, round-the-houses, single-decker bus alongside pensioners, toddlers and parents.

‘When you get there,’ my GP said, ‘tell them about your haemoglobin levels.’ I can’t remember the exact number she told me, but it was dangerously low. Six-point-something. Far lower than the amount a healthy human needs to run on.

I was in disbelief. ‘Can’t I just take some iron tablets?’ I asked. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You need to go now.’

I can’t remember how I got to the hospital. Maybe I splashed out on an Uber. More likely, because money was tight, I got on the same little bus that took me to and from the supermarket. If I stayed on it long enough, it would deliver me to the hospital entrance. In A&E, I sat in a plastic chair opposite a staff member behind a window and explained my situation. They gave me what looked like a raffle ticket and I sat in the waiting room, my tiredness loosening my limbs.

Someone came to get me with a wheelchair in tow. It was a long walk to the women’s ward, they said. I sat down in the chair and was zoomed along corridors. My shoulders sagged and my body folded in half. I began to sob. The staff member wheeling me tried to offer some comfort. What I would have said at the time, if I’d had the energy, was, ‘What the hell is happening to me?’

It has taken me a long time to accept that I am chronically ill. I’ve long fostered a (fairly damaging) core belief that the only person I can rely on is myself. I’ve dragged myself to the edge too many times and pushed myself too hard in the belief that there would be no one else to help me. A sudden admittance to hospital disrupted that individualist notion.

I later learned that the effects of low haemoglobin – when you don’t have enough iron in your body to effectively transport oxygen on your red blood cells – are not unlike carbon monoxide poisoning. It’s a silent killer. There’s no extreme pain, instead you just – slow down. Carbon monoxide latches onto the haemoglobin on your red blood cells so effectively that the oxygen can’t get a look-in. If it’s not caught quickly, you’ll drift off and you won’t wake up.

My low haemoglobin levels were due to excessive blood loss – heavy periods that have wrecked five days of my life a month since puberty. I remember falling asleep in the middle of the day at university. I once tried to put a metal plate in the microwave; my boyfriend stopped me. The blood loss is so severe that during the rest of the month, my body can’t keep up with last month’s loss before the new month’s loss begins.

In the women’s ward, everyone in the other beds was at least double my age. Wires were hooked up into the vein of my left arm and I was told I was having a blood transfusion. I thanked every god in the universe that I was born in a country in which this health catastrophe wouldn’t plunge me into bankruptcy.

The sounds of the women’s ward were disorientating. In the bed opposite me, a very old lady muttered ‘Please help me’ at three-minute intervals and fought with any staff member who heeded her call. Next to her was a middle-aged woman with a thick plastic bag of dark urine hanging off the side of her bed. She wailed through the night. In the small hours, I asked her to keep it down so I could get some sleep. ‘I’m sorry, my darling,’ she said. ‘I’m in a lot of pain.’ I felt terrible for chastising her.

Overnight, three litres of fresh blood were drip-fed into my veins. At one point, I had to go to the toilet, hooked up to my drip. A nurse helped me take the blood with me.

The next day in the hospital pharmacy, a friendly pharmacist let me take home a bulky paper bag full of medicines for free. There were dozens of pills. Two types of pills to stop the bleeding when it arrived. Pills to top up the iron levels in my newly acquired blood.

Days later, lying on the sofa in recovery, I was awash with a sense of gratitude. I marvelled at the fact the bagged blood was there when I needed it. I wondered who my blood donors might be. Did we live similar lives? Did we have different political views? I was in awe of the altruism. I urged everyone around me to give blood if they could and, since I can’t give blood, I signed up to be a posthumous organ donor. The card is still in my purse.

While it’s not entirely dissipated, the core belief that I could only ever rely on myself began to erode after my hospital trip. I needed an NHS to lean on and an anonymous donor who shared my blood type to donate just in time when I needed it. I needed a smiling in-house pharmacist to sort me out with the medicines I couldn’t afford at the time. I needed a nurse to help me get to the toilet. I needed a community of people who had dedicated their lives to care.

I still get bouts of crashing tiredness after physical activity. A long lockdown walk to the pet shop had me wiped out for the rest of the day. Iron supplements are part of my daily routine. Coronavirus has severely delayed the scheduled surgery I was due to have that would have gone some way in resolving my underlying heavy bleeding problem.

I’m still managing my iron-deficiency anaemia. But thanks to that blood transfusion, the NHS and the kindness of many strangers, I’m still alive.

⇐ Предыдущая 84 85 86 87 888990 91 92 93 Следующая ⇒