Life as a baby boomer can be pretty fantastic, especially if your "office" is a hammock strung between coconut palms on a beautiful tropical beach. Some would say it was a mid-life crisis that led me to downshift, opt out of the rat race and buy a sea front restaurant and bar in Thailand.

Regardless, by employing quality staff to do the hard graft for me, I can now while away my time, swinging in the sea breeze, congratulating myself on my life choice, contemplating how lucky I am to be living and working where I do...

But paradise is not always perfect. It can bite.

One sunny day, after swimming a couple of miles in the turquoise sea, I flopped into my hammock, mulling over whether to have fresh crab or giant shrimps for lunch when something sharp stabbed me in the back. I sat up and brushed the mesh of the hammock, thinking a twig had disguised itself as part of my office furniture, but found nothing. I lay back and got stabbed again.

Wiser men would have leaped up and checked out what exactly was causing the annoyance, but Thailand has a way of insinuating its laid back sense of purpose into those of us who choose to live here, and instead I repeated the futile exercise of moments before. Yes, I am that stupid. And yes, I found exactly the same thing: nothing.

Determined not to let the two stabbing incidents get in the way of my sunbathing routine, I carefully relaxed back. This time I felt something bite me, a sensation much less painful than the first two incidents, but nonetheless, uncomfortable.

Ants. It had to be. The little mites are everywhere and I have been bitten many times. So, having concluded a phantom twig had pierced my skin a couple of times, I then convinced myself invisible ants were nibbling my back. I say "invisible" because I could not see them. I brushed my back and the hammock and tried to lie down again.

I could feel them attacking me but I refused to budge from my hammock, outside my restaurant, on my beach. I just wriggled around and ignored them. Did I mention I am stupid?

Ten minutes later I started to see stars floating and felt a little lightheaded. I stood, a little less steadily than normal, and headed to the restroom. On the way a waitress yelped in horror at the sight of my back. In the bathroom mirror I could see why.

I had several large livid raised patches, almost covering my back. I guessed I needed some antihistamine - the stuff that you take to relieve minor allergies like hay fever, irritation from mosquito bites, etc. - and sent a waitress to the nearby pharmacy. I still did not think anything serious was happening, but by the time she got back my lightheadedness had proceeded to the point where I was slumped, semi-conscious, drooling and incapable of raising my head.

My staff man-handled me to my car and my chef did an impression of Michael Schumaker to get me to the hospital before I died: apparently I was not breathing.

I vaguely remember being hauled from the car onto a gurney, thinking that dying like this was not so bad. It was surreal and felt like a drunken stupor, but without the hours of fun beforehand.

They wheeled me to the ER where the doctor roused me by pumping me full of oxygen, adrenaline, antihistamine and steroids. Or maybe it was her digging holes in my back with her scalpel that brought me round. She demanded to know what had bitten me, and if I had ever had an allergic reaction before. I groggily explained that maybe it was ants, and I had never reacted like this to any insect, although I had felt pretty bad once before after being attacked by a battalion of mosquitoes which bit me over fifty times.

She decided I was anaphylactic. Basically this means I get massive allergic reactions to small stimuli like insect bites. And I could die from being bitten at any time if not urgently treated. Not the best news to receive in the Tropics. Within twenty-four hours I was fit enough to leave the hospital and within another twenty-four I was on a flight to Bangkok for a specialist opinion.

My heart felt fit to explode: I was pumped full of adrenalin and steroids and aggressive as hell. My mood was swinging from high to low, and I actually cried. For the first time in my life I was acutely aware of the frailty of the human body. My human body. I have been fit all my life and at fifty-one I generally pass for someone fifteen years younger. Suddenly I was at death's door from a humble insect bite!

Eventually I saw a specialist and between us, from the pattern of bite marks, we established what was responsible: a centipede. Really. The little critter (maybe two inches long) was probably on my back all the time and objected when I repeatedly tried to crush it. Hence being bitten in ten places, and injected with cardio-toxic venom in each.

Apparently our local centipede kills chickens, and occasionally pigs, with this heart stopping concoction. The first, most toxic bites were located behind my own heart. The specialist thinks I might just have reacted to the poison and may not be anaphylactic.

May not be. I will not know until I get bitten again. Meanwhile I have a choice: to change my life and carry an emergency adrenaline injector to use if I come across a centipede again, whilst constantly worrying that I may now be sensitized to other insect poisons like bee or jelly fish stings. Or I can carry on as before, and continue to be thankful I am alive.

I choose the latter - I'm back in my hammock!"

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This post guest-blogged by Will Patching - a writer at Helium.com