April Carter

My experience with sepsis began at the end of my mother’s fight with terminal cancer.
As a single mother, I had become accustomed to taking care of everyone else but myself. My dad (a stroke/cancer survivor) has been living with me for 6 years, and my mom was three blocks away. The stress of caring for them on top of sending one child to college and navigating the complex world of a “gifted” elementary student was consuming my entire attention span. I was sick all the time, but I assumed it was normal since every doctor I spoke to prescribed low grade antibiotics or home remedies.

My mother passed away on a Friday afternoon as I held her hand. My own sickness was practically unbearable, but again, I assumed it was only an average cold compounded by stress. When my neck started to swell my family refused to let me stand by, as my mother discovered her Hodgkin’s Lymphoma from a swollen node in her neck. At that point I couldn’t walk from one side of my house to the other without being completely out of breath. I checked myself into the ER for the third time in four days, and refused to leave without a blood test.

My lactate levels were through the roof, and my immune system had started to attack my own body. I had an underlying condition (diabetes) that exacerbated the strep/staph/bronchitis infections that two different hospitals avoided diagnosing. The worst part of it all was the fear in my children who had just lost their 58 years young grandmother and only days later faced losing their mother too. (Sepsis and Diabetes)

To the mothers and fathers out there who dedicate their entire life to others and struggle to focus on their own health: please stop. Stop and take a break. In fact, fight for YOU the way you fight for them. They need you, and you can’t help anyone if you don’t help yourself first!