Looking much better for her stay and with her appetite back to normal my wife was released from the hospital.

That's the good news. The bad news is that she is suffering from Lupus Nephritis Type 4, an autoimmune condition in which the body's defences attack the kidneys. She's put on 55mg of steroids daily and a visit to the day hospital is scheduled for a week later.

Over the next few days her mental health deteriorated. It started with her either not remembering what she had said or repeating herself. She was finding it difficult to sleep and soon lost track of time, getting out of bed in the middle of the night to undertake household chores. At one point she was convinced there were people in the house and asked why I had invited them, although there was no one of course. On another occasion she imagined a jigsaw puzzle was the picture of me with our first daughter who had died in 1998. She believed our two younger children belonged to her sister. Much of how she felt at the time became apparent only after her recovery but at the time she thought she was going to die.

Having lost around 15kg in weight and barely able to walk my wife was finally admitted to the Nephrology department of Carlos Haya Hospital in Malaga, Spain.

I say "finally" because we had been here one week before on the recommendation of the local hospital in Velez-Malaga. At that time they had suspected her of being anaemic but were concerned that it was something worse. The Nephrology staff had dismissed it as anaemia without any further tests and told me to give my wife an injection of Aranesp and a daily iron supplement. Following the treatment my wife developed a rash that covered one half of her body and after one week her physical condition had deteriorated to the point where she could barely walk, so I had taken her to the local clinic where a doctor referred her immediately to the emergency ward at the Velez-Malaga hospital. We waited until 2:30 the following morning for a consultation after which, once again, my wife was referred for admission to the Nephrology unit of Carlos Haya hospital in Malaga. When we explained what had happened during our visit to the hospital the previous week the doctors decided it was better to keep my wife at the emergency ward until it was convenient for her to be taken to Carlos Haya for admission. They succeeded where we had failed and we awaited the results of blood tests and, ultimately, a kidney biopsy.