Brendan O’Connor has opened up about “staring death in the face” after suffering from a horrendous bout of flu.
The RTE star claims his body was taken over by the illness, leaving him to fear for his life due to the extreme symptoms.
Writing in the Sunday Independent, he explained: “Phase one was uncontrollable shivers at work and then a feeling of needing to lie down on the ground. I left and spent the next 48 hours thinking I’m fine but I’ll just have a little lie down.
“And on cue I’d go into a kind of psychedelic delirium, a semi-waking dream based loosely on what was on the radio. I’d come to every few hours in a soaking wet bed thinking I was now fine and I’d get up to go down stairs and get on with my day. I’d last a half an hour and then bang, I was gone again.”
He continued: “One thing that was new about it for me was that I would occasionally become convinced I was going to die, that it was attacking my heart or vital organs. Next morning I decided I had licked it. I was pleased. Everyone else had said it was a week, though I heard of one guy who did it in four days. I had done it in three.
“Off to work I went. And then the stomach hit. I had one of the worst evenings of my life. But I woke up next morning feeling human again and ready to get on with my life; even the broken glass style pain in my throat which had been a constant in all of it was abating.”
The former chat show host said things then went from bad to worse: “So again, off to work, day goes well, I come home and bang, suddenly I have the most splittingest headache ever. It feels like my head is going to explode. Obviously I decided I was dying again.
Brendan said he feels he has “stared death in the face” and will make sure to be getting the flu vaccine next Winter, jokingly adding: “I am now an old person, who fears the flu could get me. So next season, I’ll queue with the others of my kind for the jab.”
