A man was rushed to hospital after he turned blue from head-to-toe, only to discover it was dye from his bedsheets.
Tommy Lynch, 42, was recently gifted navy blue bedsheets by a friend and had slept in them for two nights when he woke up looking like ‘an Avatar’.
This prompted his gift-giving friend, who is a carer, to rush the construction worker to Queen’s Hospital, Burton-on-Trent, where he was given a bed within minutes and hooked up to oxygen – while surrounded by around 10 concerned doctors.
It was only after a doctor rubbed his arm with an alcohol wipe to take some blood, turning the wipe blue, that Mr Lynch realised his current state was due to his offending new sheets, giving his doctors a good laugh.
Mr Lynch, from Castle Gresley, Derbyshire, admitted he ‘never knew you had to wash your sheets before you slept on them’ and added: ‘Everyone in the reception of A&E was staring at me like they’d seen a ghost.’
He said: ‘I had to walk up to the desk and I didn’t even know what to say: “Hi, I’ve woken up blue”.
‘The doctors said they’d never seen someone that colour before and still been alive. I looked like an Avatar.
‘As soon as they wiped my arm and it came off blue, it clicked.
Tommy Lynch was rushed to hospital after he turned blue from head-to-toe, where he was quickly hooked up to oxygen, only to discover it was dye from his bedsheets
Mr Lynch was recently gifted navy blue bedsheets by a friend and had slept in them for two nights when he woke up looking like ‘an Avatar’
‘I was mortified but they said I’d given them a good laugh. They don’t usually have funny stories in A&E.’
Mr Lynch had been given the £40 king-size bedsheets as a gift from his friend Del to keep him warm in his barn home.
However he did not know that bedsheets need to be washed before use to stop the dye from transferring on to the user’s skin.
Mr Lynch overslept after the second night of sleeping in them last November and woke up in the afternoon ‘bright blue’.
He said: ‘I had shaken hands with someone the day before and they looked light blue then but I thought I was just cold.
‘The next night I must have overheated but I was lovely and cosy.
‘My friend Del woke me up by knocking on the door as I’d slept for 14 hours. He took one look at me and said I needed to go to hospital.’
In a state of confusion from his ‘deep sleep’, Mr Lynch sent a photo to his mother, who started ‘panicking’ over her son’s blood circulation.
Mr Lynch had been given the £40 king-size bedsheets as a gift from his friend Del to keep him warm in his barn home
He proceeded to scrub his hands but the blue wouldn’t come off, nor was it changing the colour of the soap.
He added: ‘I was sorting my hair out when my mate said we needed to go as he’d seen it before as a carer and thought it wasn’t good.’
Del, Mr Lynch’s friend, was concerned his pal might be ill and oxygen-deprived, leaving him in his blue state, and took him to hospital.
Mr Lynch said: ‘They whisked me through, put me straight on oxygen, asking me all these questions.
‘I had about 10 doctors all around me at one point.
‘They went to take my blood and as soon as she wiped my arm, the wipe went blue. Then it clicked.
‘I said “oh my god, I’m so sorry”.
‘They were absolutely fantastic but I was mortified.
‘Everyone was still laughing at me as I walked out.’
Following revelation about the dye, Mr Lynch called his mother to update her, but patchy reception left her thinking someone else had called to inform her of her son’s death.
After assuring her that he was in fact alive, Mr Lynch spent the next week in the bathtub trying to scrub off the blue.
He said: ‘I left more red than blue that day.
‘People were still looking at me weirdly as I had bath after bath but it took a week. The water was blue.
‘The first thing I did when I got home was wash my sheets. I haven’t gone blue since.
‘Always wash your sheets before you sleep in them. Unless you want to jump in the queue at A&E.’