The coma was supposed to last a couple of days, but the bacteria was antibiotic resistant. It was mutating so quickly they couldn’t find a drug to tackle it. The doctors were working with an international team to get ahead of its next move. He was put on a ventilator. My mother-in-law moved in with me and we took it in turns to visit him while the other one looked after my baby. I breastfed in meetings with doctors while they told us that he may need dialysis, that he had arrhythmia and sepsis, that the bacteria had eaten over three quarters of his right lung. They told us that when he was well enough, they would lie him on his back again. Every day I saw him lying on his front I lost hope.

One day they told us that it looked like the end of the road. Ben’s hands and feet had turned purple. He had sepsis and multiple organ failure. If this antibiotic didn’t start to work, we would have to say our goodbyes. I took all his clothes out of the cupboard and sat there clutching them and sobbing. My mother-in-law frantically researched alternative cures. We would be allowed to administer one on compassionate grounds if the doctors conceded all else had failed. We found a microbiologist in Georgia who could make as a bacteriophage, a virus that might be able to penetrate the bacteria.

“I’ll just fly to Georgia,” I said. “I’ll strap the baby to my front and go.”

“No, it makes more sense for me to go,” said my mother-in-law, at age 74.

Just as I was about to send my Russian-speaking sister-in-law to Georgia, Ben’s condition started to improve. He responded to the antibiotics, his fever dissipated, they very slowly woke him up. Recovery has been far from straight forward. The first time they tried to move Ben out of the ICU he had a heart attack. They later discovered he had acute myeloid leukaemia – the reason for the infection’s severity. In the last 10 months Ben has suffered recurrent pneumonia, had to learn to walk again and had an 11 centimetre abscess surgically removed from his throat. His vocal cords are paralysed and he may never perform again. Just a few months ago, an infection in his spinal fluid landed him in palliative care. He was in agony, hallucinating and unable to eat. His family flew out and we talked about wishes and ashes.

“If you get through this”, I said to him, “I think we should get married.”

“Is there any music you think he’d like played at his funeral?” His brother asked. The only song that entered my head was the Bee Gees’ More Than a Woman. It was a song I thought we’d play at our wedding.

“If you get through this”, I said to him, “I think we should get married.”

He agreed. And once again, he rallied. He was fed through a tube for six weeks and his weight dropped to 50 kilos. The doctors told us there would be an extended break from chemo. They wanted him to come home and spend some time with his family. “Medicine is only one part of healing,” they said. “He also needs love.”