Alisha Bradney

I was 21 years old, working a part-time job when I noticed pain in my leg one day. I shrugged it off thinking I must have pulled a muscle. After about a week the pain got even worse, so I went to the ER. The doctor order a scan for blood clots but couldn’t find anything. They gave me pain meds and then sent me home.

Two days later, the pain was even worse than before. I went back to the ER and the doctor said he thought it was sciatica. They sent me home. The next day I came back because I was nauseous and vomiting. They did an x-ray of my chest and found what the doctor thought was a nodule on my lung. He told me to come back and have it checked in 3 months to make sure it wasn’t cancer. They sent me home with antibiotics and said the nausea was just a symptom of sciatica. By then, my leg pain was so bad I was using crutches to get around. It hurt to walk on it. Two days later I woke up and felt weird. I couldn’t breathe and my head felt foggy.

I had my mom take me to a different hospital because at that point I was done dealing with the first ER. I walked into the Emergency Room and they got me in right away. They knew something was wrong. I sat down on the bed and then became unconscious.

I don’t remember anything they did when they ran test. They woke me up and said they were going to sedate me, intubate me, and that I’d wake up at a different hospital. They sent me to a Level 1 trauma hospital 2 1/2 hours away. From there they induced a coma while they ran more tests. They found a blood clot in my leg and a clot in my left lung. They believe the other hospital didn’t catch it in time. They also found that the “nodule” on my lungs was an infection from having pneumonia caused by the blood clot. I had MRSA.  The doctor said it was covering my lungs and taking over my body. (Sepsis and Pneumonia, Sepsis and MRSA)

I spent 9 days in a coma while they were trying to fight septic shock. There were times my fever reached 104. My oxygen saturation at 70. My body turned blue. My kidneys started failing. The hospital was doing a research study on sepsis and my mom signed me up. They gave me a mystery drug that stopped the kidney failure and started controlling the septic shock.

After 9 days they finally woke me up. I spent 2 weeks in the hospital recovering before they sent me to a rehab facility so I could learn to walk, bathe, feed myself, and gain my strength. I spent a week there before I got to come home on antibiotic infusions, twice daily. After 2 more months my Infectious disease doctor confirmed I no longer had MRSA.

It has now been a year and half and I am very healthy. Finally back to working and going to school. I start paramedic classes very soon. Even though I made a full recovery, every day is still a struggle. I have dealt with pain in my leg ever since. I deal with the pain every day because it reminds me that God chose this path and if I wasn’t chosen these cards, I would be dead.