Gail Guglietta

My wife, Gail Guglietta died from septic shock in March 2020. She was 54 years old, having just celebrated her birthday the previous December. The sepsis was brought on by a ruptured colon, which was caused by undiagnosed diverticulitis. (Sepsis and Perforated Bowel, Sepsis and Septic Shock) Despite living a healthy lifestyle that included being active, eating and cooking healthy (she was an excellent cook), and exercising regularly, she dealt with digestive system issues her whole life. It caused her to downplay these problems, noting that these problems happened to her grandmothers. With that, she never got the right diagnosis for these recurring issues despite my urging her over the years to do so. This time, her symptoms became more severe than previous flare-ups, and she waited too long to seek medical treatment. She died 2 days after being admitted to the hospital.

Gail’s death is a stark reminder of why the acronym T.I.M.E. is so important in the fight against sepsis. When this episode occurred, it didn’t go away so quickly. Besides pain, she experienced excessive bloating. She figured it was food allergies or work-related stress; or the result of her IBS turning into IBD. I kept insisting that we get her immediate medical attention, but going near an emergency room was not what she (or many others) wanted to do at a time when COVID was beginning to spread through the country. The pandemic indirectly played a part in causing her death in my opinion.

So, she insisted she could ride it out, hoping the symptoms would subside as previously. She wanted to wait for an appointment to open with a GI specialist. I kept telling her we couldn’t wait, that this flare-up was bringing on more serious symptoms. We both knew what sepsis was, but we didn’t know the warning signs. And after fighting this on and off for 2 weeks, she suddenly began to have shortness of breath and was lethargic most of the time. Her body temperature began to fluctuate and then suddenly she began showing signs of brain fog. At that point, Gail finally agreed to go to the emergency room. I’m convinced that if she had agreed to that even 2 days earlier, she’d be alive today. It didn’t take long for a CT scan to reveal that the rupture had occurred well before we got there; a bacterial infection had developed and with it, sepsis. And it didn’t take long for septic shock to begin shutting down her vital organs. I never left her side the whole time she was hospitalized. Our son and other family members were there with me when she passed.

Gail had the most beautiful blue eyes and a smile that just lit up the room. She was beautiful (“my babe”), intelligent, had an engaging personality and loved to volunteer her time. Her work career was spent as an attorney and then as a contracts manager in the pharma industry. When 2020 began, we were starting to make plans for our 30th wedding anniversary trip over the summer. She was interviewing for a new job, and we were in the process of downsizing to a new home. That all ended on March 10, 2020.

Gail was the love of my life. We were together over 32 years. A bright, beautiful light went out in the world when she died. And it is in her eternal memory that I’ve dedicated my life to being a passionate advocate for sepsis awareness and prevention.

Source: Peter Guglietta; husband, married for 30 years.