BOXER Dan Barton should be putting the final touches to his preparations for a first title fight in the professional ranks.

The 28-year-old and Geraint Goodridge were supposed to contest the vacant Welsh middleweight strap at the Newport Centre this Saturday.

While Barton is attending the Sanigar Events show, it will only be to cheer on St Joseph's stablemates including Andrew Selby and Robbie Turley.

But, in truth, the father-of-one is just lucky to still be alive to make the short trip to the city centre from his home in Rogerstone.

Newport-born Barton is currently recuperating after contracting a potentially deadly combination of pneumonia and sepsis, the life-threatening condition where the body’s response to an infection causes injury to its own tissues and organs.

Following a week in intensive care, Barton is steadily returning to full health with the help of partner Kristy and eight-month-old daughter Emilia.

“I feel tired and weak but I’m on the mend,” said Tony Borg-trained Barton, who has won three and drawn one of his four bouts in the paid code.

“I had a fever and a bit of sickness about five weeks ago so took a week off training. I got straight back into it as soon as I felt better but then a week later the flu symptoms came back.

“I’d been sparring the day before and didn’t feel right after six rounds, I felt tired, and I thought then something wasn’t right.

“I woke up on the Monday feeling very ill and early on the Tuesday morning I was struggling to breathe.

“We rang the out of hours and they told us to get to the hospital so we went to the Royal Gwent straight away and I was put in the resuscitation department.

“I’d got to the hospital at around 1.30am and at about 5am I was in a massive amount of pain and couldn’t breathe so they injected me with morphine.

“My oxygen levels were dangerously low so I was taken for an x-ray and the doctors discovered I had sepsis on top of pneumonia.

“They moved me to intensive care and my oxygen levels were dropping.

“Your oxygen levels are normally 98-100, a chronic smoker’s would be 96 – mine were 77, and that was with 80% support.

“They told me I had one last chance to help me breathe. It was a really uncomfortable mask that when you put it on felt like you had your head out of a car window at 50mph – I had nine-and-a-half hours of that.

“If it didn’t work they were going to put me in an induced coma for a couple of hours.

“They didn’t want to do it so getting my oxygen levels back up was like another fight for me.

“The sepsis was still in my system so my body was fighting that too – it was a tough six days in intensive care.

“I was in hospital for eight days in total and everything is a bit of a blur. People came to visit me but I can’t really remember much of it because I was exhausted.”

When reflecting on what he has gone through over the past six weeks, Barton knows how close he came to not being here at all.

“My partner is doing everything for me and she has the baby to look after, so I can’t thank her enough,” he added.

“Before this I’d be up before work running five or six miles and then doing 10 rounds and sparring in the night, now I’m absolutely exhausted just walking up the stairs.

“I remember at one point thinking it wasn’t too serious, but the doctor told me that if I hadn’t gone to the hospital when I did it would have been fatal.

“It has been a massive eye opener. You always assume it’s only older people who get pneumonia, and you hear more and more about sepsis now.

“My daughter didn’t see me for over a week and I missed her terribly. That was hard.

“It was great to see her when I got home. She kept staring at me and must have been thinking ‘where did he go?

“I haven’t lost much weight, about 5lbs, so I’m nearly on fight weight. It’s muscle mass I’ve lost.

“It’s because I wasn’t eating and the infection was taking its toll, so I’ve got to build myself up again.”

He continued: “I didn’t realise the severity of what was going on.

“Before they told me I had pneumonia and sepsis I was still thinking about fighting. It was still in my head that I was definitely going to fight.

“They said that for a young man like myself it’s easier to get over this than a normal patient.

“They’ve said I’m not to do anything strenuous at all for at least six weeks, so that’s the game plan.

“In the worst case a full recovery can take six months. For me, it’s a grey area at the moment because we don’t quite know yet how quickly my body can get over it.”

As well as thanking his partner, family and friends for their support, Barton, a regional sales manager at Grenke Leasing, paid tribute to the staff at the Royal Gwent Hospital.

“They are something else in intensive care, they really are,” he said.

“I had a nurse looking after me 24 hours a day, they can’t do enough for you.”