Jeremy Mansfield on the mend
For 50 days over the festive season former TV and radio host Jeremy Mansfield was in hospital fighting a superbug. He tells YOU his story
HE’S visibly thinner and walks gingerly as he appears from the kitchen balancing a tray of coffee. But even this simple exertion is a triumph for Jeremy Mansfield – a few weeks ago he was so weak even carrying a tray was out of the question.
A rampant superbug ravaged the 54-year-old former radio and TV host’s body, leaving him fighting for his life in hospital from November to early January and having to undergo two operations on his spine.
Yet he’s almost back to his old self, cracking jokes as he relaxes on a couch on the patio of his lovely home in northern Johannesburg.
“I was in a meeting in Cape Town on Monday and a guy walks in and goes, ‘Howzit, that’s so cool,’ pointing at my brace, and the CEO says, ‘No, it’s not – he’s had two back ops and that’s a back brace!’ He thought it was a cummerbund, ”Jeremy says, roaring with laughter.
For 50 long days he didn’t do much laughing though – even for a man used to fighting a life-threatening condition this was something else.
IT STARTED with unexplained backache which lingered for two weeks before he decided to see a physio. On the morning of the appointment he was reversing his Toyota Land Cruiser out of his driveway but he misjudged the closing of the electric gate and rammed into it.
“I got such a fright,” he recalls. “I put the car into drive but I was delirious from the infection I didn’t yet know I had and instead of hitting the brakes I put my foot on the accelerator and went through the garage door into my wife’s car which went into the kitchen wall.
“Talk about wrecking the entire front of your house in 30 seconds!”
His wife, Jacqui, thought he’d had a stroke and rushed him to hospital where he was admitted on the spot for tests.
Doctors diagnosed Jeremy with a superbug, which was contributing to his back pain. Because his white blood cell count had dropped so low he had no defence mechanism to fight it.
“For the first five days I didn’t know where I was. I was pulling drips out and saying ‘I’m going home, call me an Uber’, and the nurse would say, ‘So you’re going
to go home naked then?’”
The infection made him so delirious he was convinced people were drugging him to take him to be interrogated.
The superbug eventually cleared up but blood tests showed Jeremy still had an infection and he had CAT scans and MRIs to try to locate it.
“They eventually found it in one of my discs, between the vertebrae,” he says.
Jeremy recalls being delighted when a specialist told him he’d be out in time to watch the Sevens rugby tournament in Cape Town on 9 December – but his joy was short-lived.
The abscess on the disc burst and the infection spread into his lumbar region. A benign mass started developing in his spine and he had to go under the knife twice to remove it.
His condition deteriorated and he had to resign himself to spending the festive season in hospital.
It was a bitter blow. The family were looking forward to Christmas at home – some of Jacqui’s family were arriving from overseas. And after New Year Jeremy planned to go to the Eastern Cape to see his family. “None of that happened,” he says ruefully.
IT WASN’T the first time Jeremy had had to place his faith – and his life – in the hands of doctors. In 2009 the award-winning broadcaster was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, a blood cancer that attacks the lymph nodes. He had nine months of treatment and was declared cancer-free – but one of his biggest fears during his superbug ordeal was that the leukaemia would return.
“Being flat on your back after an operation, the pain and all the things that go with oncology and the nausea . . . I think I’d have thrown up my hands and said I give up. I don’t think I would have coped if the cancer had come back.”
Doctors think the infection may have come from a small abscess under a tooth. Bacteria entered his bloodstream, causing havoc.
Jeremy was kept in isolation in hospital, experiencing either agony or boredom. During those dark days it was wife Jacqui, daughter Gabriella – now in her twenties – and other family members who kept him going.
He believes family support was vital to his recovery and if Jacqui hadn’t insisted on taking him to hospital when she did he might have been paralysed now.
He’s also grateful for the love and compassion he received from his fans. “People on Facebook started prayer groups,” he says. “It gives you strength when others out there are sending you white light.”
Jeremy reprimands his three-legged dog, Toto, when the pooch chews the bedding by the pool. The animal runs up and sits adoringly at his feet.
“Toto was hit by a car and they had to amputate his leg,” he says.
Early in January he and Jacqui had to put down their ageing dog, Alex, who was riddled with cancer.
“They let me out of the hospital that day,” Jeremy says. “The vet came to the house and we put him to sleep here in the garden.”
Jeremy is slowly getting his strength back. He can manage without wearing the back brace all the time, he’s started driving again and he’s back in the gym.
He says he now realises how much he’d been overworking before he became ill.
“Suddenly you open an email from your tax consultant, your municipal statement – all that stuff we deal with every day and you realise how much stress we live under.
“I think what happened to me was the universe saying, ‘ You know what? If you’re not going to calm down, I’ll calm you down myself ’.”
Life is still pretty busy though. He’ll be splitting his time between politics (he announced last year he’d run for the DA in the 2019 elections), property development, charity work and doing a master’s degree in business administration. But he’s determined to take it easy.
Not surprisingly, the former Laugh Out Loud host believes there’s humour to be found in every situation. And for him, humour is a means of healing.
“Sometimes it’s dark humour, but you’ve got to find it,” he says. “If you don’t you may as well curl up and die.”
‘I don’t think I would have coped if the cancer had come back’