Steven Watkins
This is my journey of 37-days in hospital with Sepsis. August to September 2023
It must have all started for me when I got a sore neck and shoulders, about one week before I ended up in hospital. I went to our medical and injury centre since I could not see my GP for at least another week, and after waiting for about three hours finally got to see a doctor. However, they only sent me home to do some neck exercises…. no blood tests… otherwise they would have found what was really happening with me. What ended up being a life-threatening infection a week later.
The following morning, I came over all hot and felt like I was going to faint/ black out which I duly did, and hit the hallway wall. I went downhill from then on for the next five days. I rang Healthline on 21st August for the second time and after a half hour talk to them, they said to get someone to help or get an ambulance to the ED department in the next two hours and they would make sure they get a wheel \chair for me, as I could not really walk. My brother took me up ED since he was already here with us.
We arrived at ED at lunchtime and by the time I was triaged it only took about 50 minutes for me to be in seeing doctors – they must have known that I was in serious trouble! I had a blood test straight away to find out what blood type I am and what my CRP (inflammatory markers) was. It was 403, and your CRP should be 5 or below.
At first the doctors suspected I was very seriously ill with covid but I was not. I had multiple lung abscesses, pneumonia, vegetation growth on one my heart valves, an acute kidney injury, a right ankle with septic arthritis, a left knee with septic arthritis, and a left forearm abscess. To find out all these infections, the bacterial infection was staphylococcus aureus.
I had multiple X-rays, two CT scans, and a chest radiograph – all this on my first day in hospital! (Sepsis and Bacterial Infections)
I had to wait for a bed in ICU, so they put me in a general medical ward until I was transferred there. I ended up on oxygen for over a month, and had a feeding tube in me for a couple of weeks. I cannot remember physically eating any food for two or three weeks, but according to my records, I did eat a bit, not what I needed though hence they put a feeding tube in me.
The doctors wanted to do what they call wash out operation. This is to cut out any of the tissue that has gone bad, but I was too ill for them to operate straight away so they had to get me stable enough to be able to do the operation which ended up being on 22nd August.
I do not remember much from my five days in ICU, and I did not know then what I had or that it was so bad that the doctors told my family to expect the worst – that I might not survive the next couple of days.
Over the five days in ICU, I had in total two washout operations, more X-rays, CT scans, ultrasounds, lots of blood tests, and a blood transfusion. I must have looked terrible to family when they came to visit me. At some stage the doctors rang ICU doctors in another hospital about me. After a few days one of the doctors said to me that I am not out of the woods yet.
I slowly improved over the days and weeks to follow. I got moved to Ward 10, a High Dependency ward where I stayed four days. I was immobile and not able to do much even by this stage, so every time the nurses needed to move me it was in a sling and hoist. I was on so many antibiotics via a line in my arm. I had new antibiotics every couple of hours. I was on antibiotics for 11 weeks in total.
I got moved down to Ward 9 where I spent nearly four weeks. While I was in Ward 9, at one stage the doctors thought they would have to move me to the rehab ward but I must have improved quite a lot, so did not go there. I finally got home on the 27th September 2023.
It was great to get home. Even then I had a district nurse come every day to change my antibiotic infuser and to change any dressings. The district nurses came for every day for four weeks, then it was down to three times a week. Also, I was still having blood tests every week until the end of 2023.
At one of my outpatient appointments the surgeon said to me when I was asking him some questions that I had the right attitude right from the start for me to survive this. I am very grateful to be alive. I could not have survived this alone. I would like to thank everyone who prayed for me at this very hard time. I thank and praise God for His help and guidance through this all, and for guiding the doctors, nurses and many other hospital staff who have helped me through this. Thanks also to all my family and friends who helped and came to visit me while I was in hospital, and when I was home recovering. Going through major illness makes you appreciate the life we can all take for granted at times. We need to make the most of our time in this world.
There needs to be education on sepsis. I had only heard of sepsis but did not know what it was. Since I have been out and talking to people about sepsis most do not know what it is. Since I have been through it, I have learnt so much about. It is a very, very serious illness.
