A personal thank you to all who have enquired about the health of David over the past few months. Just a brief summary of his amazing progress to date and to share our experiences of taking ‘critically’ ill in a foreign country!
David’s main reason for moving to our home in the Algarve was its mild winter climate, which he liked, so he took up residency, post Brexit in 2018. Unfortunately, earlier this year, while having routine tests, he contracted a ‘hospital’ infection which spread into his spinal column. This was a critical situation, and he was ‘blue-lighted’ to the state hospital in Faro, where emergency life-saving neurosurgery was performed. As a family, we were advised that his chances of survival were very slim, but with the amazing care of the Portuguese ‘SNS’ (equivalent of our NHS) in ‘ICU’, he pulled through and started on his long road to recovery.
He spent the next few months in Faro hospital before being transferred to our local hospital in Portimao. A member of the family needed to be in the country at all times so James and I were doing (and still do) a bi-weekly relay to and from the U.K.
Slowly, slowly his condition improved as the infection came under control and finally he was ready to be released from hospital into the care of the ‘hospital at home’ team. This service was quite amazing (I’m not sure if this is available in the NHS), our home became a hospital bed with IV Antibiotics electronically pumped through and linked back to the hospital. A nurse, doctor and physio visited daily, doing bloods, observations etc along with daily pre-packed medication. The rest was down to us, so effectively we were doing the ‘nursing’ duties! It wasn’t long before we realised we needed to get in some extra help, using the services of a local care company.
Today David is doing really well, although he is still very weak and a little frail, he is able to get around unaided and slowly gaining back his independence.
I can’t express enough, our thanks to the incredible care we received from the Portuguese SNS (NHS), I suppose it’s like our own NHS, when you are critically ill there is no better service.
