Mars H.

I was unaware that I caught a kidney infection after my high school prom in 2023. It wasn’t until I had a horrible pain in my side I mistook for hunger pangs that I knew something was wrong.

I brushed it off and hoped the pain would be gone after a good night’s sleep. That next morning, I woke up disoriented, and in unimaginable pain. My mom rushed me to the ER, and I woke up in a hospital bed.

They had told me I had a kidney infection and sepsis. I hadn’t heard of something like that ever being able to happen before, so hearing that it happened to me was terrifying. That stay at the hospital was the worst four days of my life. I was afraid that I’d never leave, and I’d never get better.

But four days later, they told me the infection was gone, and that I could finally leave! It felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders.

That entire experience was terrifying, and I thought I wouldn’t make it out. But here I am two years later in my sophmore year of college, sepsis free and happy. My name is Mars, and I survived.