Former Dublin footballer Ciaran Whelan has opened up on the "silent killer" that almost cost him his life.
Back in July, Whelan was diagnosed with the blood infection sepsis - which accounts for more deaths in Ireland every year than lung cancer, breast cancer and HIV/Aids combined - in his left leg after initially believing he had a bout of flu.
Whelan had been in Castlebar for the championship game between Mayo and Derry, working in his role as an analyst for The Sunday Game when he took a turn.
The Raheny man eventually called an ambulance when he found it hard to walk; and that decision may well have saved his life.
"I didn't feel 100%," he told the Today With Sean O'Rourke programme on RTÉ Radio 1.
"I went home that evening, I got out of the car, and I started shivering. I had a kind of a fever, I thought I had man flu and I took to bed for 24 hours in the hope it would pass.
"I noticed a slight muscular pain in the back of my knee. I thought maybe I'd overstretched in my sleep... but it steadily got worse over the next 24, 36 hours.
"It was a huge factor that I was relatively fit."
"My fever got worse, I was vomiting. The time came when I was struggling to walk and at that stage I presented myself to Beaumont Hospital. When I got in there it was very quickly identified.
"My inflammatory bloods, which should be between zero and five, were 450. It turned out I'd developed the blood infection sepsis in my left leg.
"I was very lucky. I went in by ambulance and I was seen more or less immediately. I didn't know what sepsis was to be honest with you. It is a silent killer and we're seeing a significant increase of it. I think there were 14,000 cases of it last year in Ireland."
While Whelan admits he still has no idea how he contracted the infection, the 41-year-old stressed the absolute importance of early diagnosis and treatment.
A strapping 6'4" fit and relatively young man, his physical condition helped him recover. Others are more vulnerable.
"It can only be put down to the fact that my immune system was low and toxins got in to my body."
"It was a huge factor that I was relatively fit," two-time All-Star Whelan said.
"You look at sepsis and you look at young kids who can contract it. Sometimes it can be diagnosed as viral. People can contract it after operations, older people. They're probably more vulnerable in terms of surviving and recovering from it.
"We all know about early intervention. It is a matter of hours. I consider myself one of the lucky ones. They identified there was a serious infection in my blood and I got on the antibiotics straight away.
"I could have been sitting in A&E for two, three, four hours and that could have been fatal.
"A lot of people say 'did you have a cut, a nick of some sort?' They don't know where it came from. I had no break in my skin. I had a pain in the back of my leg. It can only be put down to the fact that my immune system was low and toxins got in to my body.
"The stats are frightening. It's really just to increase the awareness about it."
