I could be crippled for life

I still can't believe it happened to me. Of course I knew that infections have wreaked havoc through our hospital wards, and that victims of bugs such as MRSA have faced appalling consequences. But still, these things just don't happen to you, do they?

Well this time they did. One moment I was a fit, active father of two, captain of the hockey team at the BBC where I have worked for the past 20 years as a news correspondent. The next I'm slumped at home, my body suffering a type of MRSA infection I picked up in hospital. It was an infection that I then spent three weeks trying to beat in a different, far dirtier hospital.

After what was, on paper, a pretty simple operation, I've now been told I'm unlikely ever to play sport again - and probably will not even be able to run.

For a 47-year-old, it should have been quick and simple: a left-knee arthroscopy, or "key-hole" surgery, to repair a torn ligament, performed in the morning and I'd be back at home in the afternoon.

After more than six months on the waiting list, I finally went for a preassessment at Ravenscourt Park Hospital-in Chiswick, where I was assured I would recover in time for a special family holiday, a safari to Tanzania to celebrate my daughter's 18th birthday, six weeks after the planned operation.

Like an omen of things to come, however, I vividly recall the warning delivered by my doctor. "There is a slight chance of an infection," he told me, "but I'm sure we'll get you jogging again in no time."

The operation, in June, was fine but the first problems arose in the recovery room. As I came round from the anaesthetic, bleary-eyed and a little dizzy, I immediately had a coughing fit and spat up blood. Was this normal? A row of anxious faces from nurses and doctors alerted me that something was dreadfully wrong.

Within seconds, they put an oxygen mask over my face, pressed a stethoscope to my chest, and summoned the mobile X-ray machine. I had suffered a pulmonary oedema - my lungs had failed to work well enough under the anaesthetic, causing internal bleeding.

I was kept in overnight, monitoring devices clipped to my body. The next day, feeling somewhat better, I was discharged. A small hiccup, I thought. Thank God for the skill and speed of the NHS. Now I could put hospital behind me. How wrong I was.

A few days later, while I was recuperating at home, my knee suddenly became more painful, stiffening tightly. I developed a temperature. The knee swelled up and unpleasant yellowy fluid oozed from the surgical wound.

I then spent seven hours at Kingston A&E before finally reaching a bed on the ward. Don't panic just yet, I thought, they'll sort it out.

Late that evening I was taken to the operating theatre for an "aspiration" - a procedure which involves sticking a very long needle into the knee to draw off fluid to discover the cause of the infection.

But the very next day the knee swelled up again to almost double its size. There could be no doubt now. It was an infection, that I can only assume was picked up in the operating theatre at Ravenscourt Park.

The hospital says problems like this can occur, "but they are most commonly the result of infections that already exist on the patient's own skin and subsequently worsen". Yesterday the hospital said: "Mr Baker has written to us and we are actively pursuing concerns he has raised with us."

Well, I still do not know how it happened - and, as yet, no one can tell me for certain.

The next day I was transferred to a specialist orthopaedic ward at Kingston. Already the hospital regime was overwhelming, leaving me exhausted, bewildered, frightened even. I was wheeled here, pushed there, given food when I wasn't hungry, woken when I was still tired. And nobody could tell me what was really going on.

Two or three days passed as I waited for the results from the laboratory. It was as if I was disappearing into a dark tunnel, with no discernible light ahead. Meanwhile my infection got worse.

The doctors were gloomy. They confirmed septic arthritis, the result of a bug known as staphylococcus aurous. This is the SA bit of MRSA (methicillin- resistant staphylococcus aurous). Normally, a person's blood protein level would have a measure of five - mine was 230, astonishingly high.

"This infection," one of the doctors gravely warned me, "is as serious as they get." By now I was feeling terrible, with great pain in my knee, high temperatures, sweating, mouth and throat ulcers, and a general lethargy and weakness. I was told I might need as many as five more arthroscopy operations to "wash out" the infection. The last thing I wanted to do now was go under anaesthetic and have another operation - what on earth would happen to me this time round?

The next 18 days were a nightmare of "wash-out" operations, general anaesthetics, sleepless nights, blood samples and the nausea and diarrhoea caused by the huge doses of intravenous antibiotics. I felt grateful to the staff at Kingston for treating my infection, particularly the junior doctors, who were superb and sympathetic, but the longer I stayed, the more I worried about hospital hygiene and safety. I became obsessed with standards of cleanliness - I only wish everyone else had been, too.

Nurses did not always wash their hands between patients. The cleaning was often dilatory: no one appeared to supervise the cleaners and no cleaning seemed to be done at weekends. The mop-wielders rarely moved objects that were in the way, they simply went round them. At the entrance to the ward was a bottle of disinfecting hand wash. A sign asked visitors to use this. Another bottle stood by the hand-basin. They were rarely used.

The toilets were a disaster area. I saw silverfish in the corners, insects that thrive in damp, dirty conditions. The hand basins were set into the wall and were too shallow, so water splashed over the floor, bad for hygiene and slippery for patients on crutches.

Worse still, there was no hot-water tap or disinfectant hand-wash in the toilets, so you couldn't clean your hands properly. Goodness knows how many bugs were left on the door handles. The showers were no better: one overflowed into the corridor, the other went from scalding hot to cold at whim. The drains smelled disgusting.

Many of the nurses were brilliant.

But others worried me: so many of them were temporary nurses, with poor English, making clear communication difficult. Indeed, I was twice offered the wrong drugs: once a nurse misread the drug chart and another time I was offered a fellow patient's medicine. Worst of all, I was given a pin-prick blood test while half asleep in the middle of the night. It was meant for the diabetic in the next bed.

For recovery from illness you need rest, a clean environment, good diet and no anxiety: everything I lacked. The low point came when a fellow patient died. I awoke to the commotion: it was a hot night, the windows were open, and the curtains around the beds were billowing in the breeze as the nurses bustled to remove him. Only days before, he had been sitting up and chatting. In my fevered state I began to feel I, too, wouldn't get out of hospital alive.

Yet I did slowly recover: the infection count fell, my strength returned, and I could get out of bed and walk with crutches. But it was 18 days before I got out. The family holiday had to be cancelled. We lost thousands of pounds as the travel insurance company refused to pay up, saying the infection was linked to a pre-existing knee condition, thus excluding cover.

The worst was to come - X-rays show there has been further damage to my cartilage. In short, my knee is currently worse than it was before this nightmare began.

I've suffered two months of illness, a long time off work and a lot of pain and endless anxiety. I can no longer run or even jog. Even walking any distance is painful.

One specialist suggested I will eventually need knee-replacement surgery. But I will endure an awful lot of pain and immobility before I am willing to return to hospital. MRSA and similar bugs are clearly a serious problem that the NHS needs to tackle, otherwise there will be more people like me out there, reluctant to set foot inside a building that could leave you in an even worse state.

Yesterday, Carole Heatly, chief executive at Kingston Hospital NHS Trust, apologised for my experience and said: "We recognise that there is still more for us to do to improve cleanliness on site, which is a hugely important area for us.

"There are problems with the fabric of the building and some of the older basins and toilet facilities need replacing, which we are looking to do. In addition to this, building work is due to start later on in the autumn on a new PFI build which will replace the old surgical wards and theatres as well as bathroom and toilet facilities. We will also be talking to those who provide our cleaning services about how we can improve the standards of cleanliness on site.

"There are measures in place to guard against medication errors. All nurses who are employed by the Trust have to undertake mathematics and competency tests before they can independently administer drugs to patients."