Amanda V.

It was my first week at college, first time ever being away from my parents. It’s supposedly meant to be exciting and fun, right? That’s what I figured, for a perfectly healthy 18-year-old freshman like me.

Three days before my first class began, I came down with the highest fever I’ve ever had – a 103 – and no antipyretics I took could break it. I went to the student clinic on day 3 of my illness, and they dismissed it as a mild URI (upper respiratory infection) as my Covid and flu tests came back negative. I thought I’d just have to deal with it like the usual viral URI, but things kept worsening and the fourth night was so rough that I thought I’d literally cough my lungs out.

Come day 5 and I return to the clinic with an awful cough, chest pain, and dangerously low O2 sats (hypoxia). They diagnosed my pneumonia, prescribed me just 5 days of oral antibiotics, and I was getting ready to go back to the dorms when my APRN said she needed to consult on my hypoxia. She comes back a few minutes later and tells me that they were taking me to the ER. I remember being outraged at this. We already knew what the problem was, and I had the solution in the pharmacy downstairs waiting for me. The ER is expensive, and I was worried about wasting my parents’ money on an unnecessary checkup. (Sepsis and Pneumonia)

Turns out that if my provider had respected my stubborn wishes, I would’ve been dead the next day. I showed up to the ER and the initial telehealth check-up missed all of my worst conditions. I was diagnosed with some deficiencies (low potassium, sodium, magnesium, etc.) and that seemed to be it, until out of nowhere I was sent to the back of the ER with IVs in both arms, still horribly delirious and unaware of what was happening. I remember hallucinating and shaking so horribly that I couldn’t get off the toilet seat when they wanted a urine sample – I couldn’t produce one at all, and I was afraid that standing up would make me fall because of how bad the shaking was. The rest of my time in the ER didn’t make much more sense to me, as I kept passing out in the waiting room only to be reawakened by intense chills or to cough. Eventually that night I got a bed with oxygen and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that being able to breathe again was the most incredible thing ever.

I only found out that I was septic and had a failing respiratory system looking through medical records retroactively. At the time, I didn’t even know what sepsis was, and it’s terrifying to know now how close I was to dying. The worst part, I think, is that I had ample time to contact my friends and family and let them know – or say my goodbyes, just to be safe – but in my reckless young-people-are-invincible mentality, I never thought I was at risk of dying. I stayed in critical care for a total of a week and went on 6 different antibiotics. Took me over 2.4 liters of IV fluid within the first 24 hours just to hold my falling blood pressure at 100/60, and I reckon that I would’ve needed vasopressors too if I had been just a few hours late.

As of today (9/19/24), it’s been exactly a month since my illness began. My lungs are still at around 60-70% capacity compared to what they should be, I lack an appetite, and I simply can’t do things that were previously easy for me, like biking up hills around campus. I hope that maybe it’s just a long recovery process and this isn’t permanent, but I’ve never been so ill in my life.

I’ve been worried about relapsing any day while I still fight the pneumonia or contracting C. Diff because of all the antibiotics I was on, but for some strange reason I kept doing research into how I went from just pneumonia to sepsis and organ failure because honestly, I think it’s much scarier that I might miss the signs if it happens to me again. I’ve had panic attacks, and I remember a very vivid nightmare just two days ago where I was staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, covered in mottling from end-stage septic shock. When I woke up, I struggled with just forgetting about it like the usual bad dream because of how worryingly realistic it was, knowing that I would’ve been there if the clinic hadn’t insisted on taking me to the ER.

You’re never too young or healthy to get sepsis. I left my sickness untreated for too long and it went there, and I didn’t even know what it was because I’ve never heard the word before. For myself, I figured it would be best to at least learn about what came this close to killing me, and if you’re reading this, then you’re already more educated on sepsis than I was a month ago. Stay safe out there.