Deadly THIRST
Johanna Pakenham, 53, from Hampshire, never thought drinking too much water would nearly kill her…
The starting gun fired and I was off. I felt amazing as I got moving, blood pumping through my legs and the excitement of the other runners buzzing around me.
It was April this year, and I was taking part in the London Marathon.
‘You can do it, Mum!’ my daughter Anna, 28, cheered from the sidelines.
Born with cerebral palsy, it meant that everything Anna did – from getting dressed to having a shower – was a marathon for her. She’d attended Treloar’s College in Alton, Hampshire, which was a huge help to us.
So when my husband Richard, 48, suggested I run the marathon to raise funds for the college, it was a no-brainer.
And here I was, halfway through the London Marathon on a scorching hot day, running for something that meant the most to me.
I paced myself as well as I could, and stopped at every water station, gulping a few refreshing mouthfuls.
As Canary Wharf loomed ahead of me, I knew I was getting close. I imagined crossing the finish
line, Richard and Anna
there to greet me. But the next thing I
knew, I was waking up in an intensive care unit! What on earth?! I was lying in a hospital bed with Richard looking down at me with a concerned look. ‘You’re back!’ he said. ‘What’s happened?’ I cried, confused. ‘You’ve been out cold for days,’ he said. I was stunned. Richard explained that I’d completed the marathon, but afterwards I’d complained of feeling unwell. I didn’t even
My husband performed CPR
remember crossing the finish line…
Richard and my friend Annabel had decided to drive me home, but, sitting in the back of Annabel’s car, I was suddenly vomiting all over the back seat!
‘We thought you were just dehydrated,’ Richard went on.
They drove me to Annabel’s house where they gave me some Dioralyte, a rehydration sachet.
‘By this point, you didn’t even know your own name or where you were,’ Richard explained.
‘Then you started fitting and stopped breathing.’
Annabel called 999, while Richard performed CPR on me.
Luckily, the ambulance arrived at that point and rushed me to the Royal Hampshire Hospital.
‘I could have died!’ I cried, reeling from all this information.
At the hospital, doctors discovered that I had hyponatraemia, meaning my sodium levels were low.
Because I’d been sweating so much in the heat, I’d lost a massive amount of electrolytes – the salts found in the blood stream.
To make things worse, all the water I’d been guzzling down had flushed away what little sodium I had left. Richard explained that doctors had to put me in an induced coma so they could give me IV treatment to replace the electrolytes.
One minute I was running the London Marathon, feeling as fit as a fiddle, the next I was lying in hospital, feeling confused.
Thankfully, after four days, blood tests and an echogram on my heart all came back normal and I was allowed home.
It’s crazy to think that if I’d had water with added electrolytes, like most sports drinks contain, this wouldn’t have happened.
Who would have thought that drinking too much water nearly killed me?