Anna Moody
My Sepsis story began November 2021. I was experiencing a cough. “It’s just a cough” I said to myself, “I’ll be fine”. Carrying on with work, kids, home, just like every other wife / mom I didn’t make time to see a doctor for myself. I was so busy, didn’t have the time and it was ‘just a cough’ after all. A couple weeks passed by this cough was not shifting and over the counter medicine was not doing anything to help.
It was a Saturday morning, 27th of November 2021, I forced myself out of bed. “I’ll be back in a couple hours” I told my husband and headed off to do my weekly food shop. I sat in the car park for a few minutes, struggling, I phoned my husband and told him I wasn’t feeling well, and I couldn’t do the shopping, “I’m coming home”.
Visited my GP who told me to get to the hospital, he couldn’t get an oxygen read from me. No mention of sepsis. I was feeling so tired and agitated, all I wanted to do was go home and go to sleep. I was so thirsty and drank 2 bottles of water on the way. Looking back now, I didn’t realise, it would have been the night before, since I last passed urine. I was shivering cold, couldn’t get heat into me, but it was winter so thats normal enough, right? The signs were there! It’s an awful shame I didn’t know anything about sepsis or the signs and symptoms. If I had known maybe I wouldn’t have had to go through with what I did.
Within an hour of arriving at the hospital I was intubated and ventilated in resus and commenced on CVVHD (continuous veno-venous hemodialysis). I was hypotensive, bp of 76/60, respiratory rate 22 and oxygen saturation at 86%. I was also hypothermic at 35.4.
“But she was just going to go home and sleep it off” my husband said to the doctor. “Well” replied the doctor, “if she had gone to bed, she wouldn’t have gotten out of it”. I had an hour to live.
My cough wasn’t ’just a cough’. An x-ray showed extensive multifocal pneumonia (sepsis and pneumonia). This is what led to sepsis. Heart, lung and kidney failure. I was in a medically induced coma for nearly a month, suffered from PRES (posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome) and post ICU myopathy with foot drop. My family were called a couple times to say goodbye and I was given my last rites.
On New Year’s Eve 2021 I was stable enough to leave ICU and brought to a step downward where I began a mission to get myself home. Finally, on the 18th January 2022 I was allowed to return home. This came with a long recovery journey which included a full hip replacement, learning to walk, talk and eat. The memory loss is big part of sepsis too.
I wouldn’t be here without the hard work and dedication from all the doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, speech therapists and nutritionists from the hospital and the ICU team.
I will be forever grateful.
PSS (post sepsis syndrome) is also something that patients should be told about. It’s an ongoing battle that I will always struggle with. For me the anxiety and hair loss was and is a huge factor I wasn’t prepared for. I hope to spread as much awareness about sepsis as I can so others can recognize the signs and symptoms.
