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As Sean Hanekom approached the end of Stage 3 of the gruelling Cape Epic cycle race, he felt a sharp pain in his arm.
It was a bee sting, which for most riders would have been no more than a minor irritation. For Sean, however, it was far more serious.
“It was quite a hot day,” Sean recalls. “About 2km from the end, we hit some singletracks and I got stung on my left bicep, right on the vein. It couldn’t have been at a worse spot or a worse time. We’d been riding for eight hours, it was 35°C-plus, and the blood was flowing through my body at a hell of a rate. I just turned to my riding partner and said: ‘Bee!’”
Sean knew he was allergic to bee stings and had packed an EpiPen and antihistamines. Not wanting to waste time, and assuming the antihistamines would do the job, he didn’t use the EpiPen. “I just took some antihistamines, got back on the bike, and carried on going,” he says. But quite soon afterwards he started to feel strange. “I said to my riding partner, ‘there’s a problem, we need to get to the finish quickly.’”
As soon as they did, Sean dropped his bike and staggered up to the Mediclinic medical tent. There, he told the race doctor what had happened. “She took me straight to the ICU facility at the back. Initially, I thought that was a bit over the top. Then they started putting all sorts of monitoring devices on me. I felt no pain; just very drowsy. I had no idea how serious it was.”
But Sean had arrived at the medical tent in a severely compromised condition. As a result, he required multiple doses of adrenaline and resuscitation. He was then transferred to the Critical Care Unit at Mediclinic Panorama, where he received expert care from physician Dr Marius Wasserfall and his team. In true Cape Epic spirit, Sean was discharged within 48 hours, already raring to get back on his bike.
Sean now speaks about his experience to educate people about the dangers of allergies and why it’s essential to carry adrenaline if they suffer from a life-threatening allergy.
“I still don’t know exactly what the Mediclinic team did that day,” he says, “but I do know they’re the reason I’m still alive.”
Doctors 1
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