It all started on Wednesday 8th January 2003, My dad went to work as usual and managed to cut his finger, not a serious cut I might add, he cleaned it up and carried on his normal duties, going to the gym etc.
On Friday 10th January he started to feel unwell, thought it was just a cold which got worse over the weekend with him thinking he had got the Flu, he spent all Saturday in bed and managed to get up for a bit on Sunday morning, he looked frail, tired and very poorly, bad case of the Flu we all thought! That night everything changed, he knew something wasn’t right and decided he needed the hospital, he was pink in colour and was seen by triage, after waiting in the hospital to be seen he lost all skin colour and became short of breath, he got up and asked to be seen asap, he was taken into resuscitation and doctors wasn’t sure what was happening and with the infected area building up huge blood blisters, they thought it was cellulitis. We was told he needed surgery immediately and could be there for about 5 hours.
He was back from surgery within 2 hours, and was told they had never come across this infection in that hospital, the wound was left open and the infected areas marked off with markers to access the rate it was spreading, he was then being monitored on the critical care unit. On the Monday evening after the surgery we had it confirmed that it was Necrotising Fasciitis and he needed a full blood transfusion. He was placed on kidney dialysis and by the Tuesday evening was placed on life support and that was the last time we spoke to him. Slowly over the coming days he didn’t get any better and suffered a collapsed lung on Friday 17th Jan which they couldn’t re-inflate. We requested a priest to come and give him a blessing and say a prayer.
On Wed 22nd Jan was called into a family room by the consultants, they basically explained that its only the medication and machines keeping his body alive and wasn’t showing any signs of getting any better, we was asked to not give permission but understand this situation and the choice was made to discontinue medication. He had his family around him, was made comfortable and passed very quickly.
From a cut finger he lost a huge fight within 12 days, doctors looking after him did an amazing job, couldn’t have been better.
David William Norman died January 22nd 2003 aged 53 yrs
