Alyvia C.

Towards the beginning if this year, I came down with what was believed to be strep. My illness consisted of swollen lymph nodes, tonsils, and a sore throat. I was in bed for days. I began feeling better after I went to an urgent care in my town and started on antibiotics. Stupidly, I didn’t finish my round of antibiotics because I began to feel better. (Sepsis and Strep Throat)

About a week later, I started experiencing extreme pain in my left lung. Thinking it was muscle spasms, I ignored it. After suffering from the pain for a week, I went to my primary care doctor and he told me I had pleurisy. No X-Ray — just a checkup. I started getting the same extreme pain in my right lung a few days later. I let it run its course for several days but it got to the point where I couldn’t breathe. My boyfriend ended up bringing me to the ER. My resting heart rate was 150 and my O2 was in the eighties. My fever got up to 104. Their first assumption was tuberculosis, because my X-Ray seemed to show holes, or cysts, in my lungs.

I was transferred to a bigger hospital and was officially diagnosed with pleural effusions, double pneumonia, an empyema, and an abscess in my right lung. (Sepsis and Pneumonia) They rushed me into surgery the next morning and preformed a thoracotomy to get everything scraped out. I was left with two chest tubes in my right ribs for three days in the ICU. The amount of pain I was in is inexplicable. My kidneys started failing from the amount of antibiotics I was on at the previous hospital.

My entire body was swollen and I wasn’t able to keep anything down. I eventually had to have a blood transfusion. I was in the hospital for two weeks exactly by the time I got out. It was revealed that the abscess was created from the combination of my sickness and me actively vaping. When I left the hospital, I still had to take antibiotics five times a day for two months. All the while, they were still making me sick and my appetite nonexistent. I lost twenty pounds throughout the process. It has been four months since my hospitalization and I am still recovering. I almost didn’t go to the ER because I believed it wasn’t as bad as it felt and that I was being dramatic. If I hadn’t gave in to my boyfriend’s begging, I would most likely be dead today. I wouldn’t wish sepsis or any of this on my worst enemy. I am 20 years old, and I am the closest to death most people older than me have, all because I was ignorant and thought I could tough it out myself.