Anita Skinner

On April 16,2015, I arrived at my parent’s home to take my mom to have her nails done and eat dinner. She was sitting at the table putting on makeup and she was excited. We went and had a great evening and had Schlotzsky’s for dinner. After watching the basketball playoffs, I went to bed about 10. I came out of my room and my mother was already gone to bed. Now that I think of it, that was odd because she was a true night owl – never to bed before 1am.

At about 3 am, my father knocked on the door to tell me mom wasn’t feeling well, she was really cold and hurt all over. I got up and went to their room and she was literally covered with every blanket they had and she was shivering. I took her blood pressure because she was having some pain in her throat, like angina. She’d tried to take a nitro pill under her tongue (she hadn’t had to do that in years) but it wouldn’t dissolve. Her BP was normally low, the doctor was okay with that due to her dialysis and prior heart surgery, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. I took her temperature and it was about 100. I told her, “Mom you have a cold, you’re going to the ER, they’ll give you antibiotics and you’ll be there overnight.”

Of course being my mother, she wasn’t trying to go at first. I put my foot down on it and she said, “What’s he (my dad) gonna do without me?” “Mom he’s got us!” She then said she had to throw up, and did. She was walking slowly, in pain. I helped her get dressed and they went to the local Methodist Stand Alone ER. They did tests, blood cultures and initially thought the flu and were giving her widespread antibiotics and were going to send her home. The fact that her oxygen saturation numbers were low concerned them and her BP was dropping out. She had a bout of diarrhea and was unable to walk back out of the bathroom or get in the bed after that. They then told my dad they would send her to ICU at Methodist Hospital in Houston, they anticipated about a week (they still had not given a diagnosis).

She was in so much pain when I got there to ICU. She was dehydrated. They couldn’t get her normal veins because they were so contracted. One of the practitioners came in to try to get a line via her groin and that was when he finally said she was really sick with a blood infection.

They had a line in her neck as well but it kept bending so they had to adjust it three times and all they could give her was Tylenol for pain and the antibiotics because they had not yet found the source of her infection. They finally got a line to give her meds to raise her BP as it was down to 70/40 by that time. They were great at the hospital.

I fed her ice and I combed her hair. She asked me for lip gloss because her lips were so dry. She told my dad before we left, as we had to be gone by 6pm, “Bring my toothbrush and clean underwear and something for my hair.” The infectious diseases doctor told us, “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it, she’ll be here a few days.”

So we went home and called to check several times and then we got a call saying that they were going to intubate her to keep her heart from working so hard. Okay, that was okay. The next day we called early and they said her BP was up to 90/70 about 8am. When we got to the hospital by 9am they were about to call us because she’d had an “episode” {cardiac} and they wanted to try a procedure to insert a balloon to try to help the heart out to be able to flush her system.

You see, my mom was a recent dialysis patient as of January. She was doing fantastic. Lost a lot of weight, her blood work was always good. She was off of almost all her medications. She’d survived open heart surgery in 1999, lymphoma in 2007, beat diabetes, had an implanted defibrillator, and even beat obesity. All those things she survived factored in to the fact that she had been compromised health wise and the sepsis was just beating her down.

She was unable to dialyze because it would drop her pressure too low. She was unable to have pain meds for the same reason. They could not give her the fluids needed because she could not dialyze. They were giving her 5 medications to keep her BP at 60/40 by that time. The cardiologist came in and spoke with us and said they could not do the balloon procedure because the heart was the only thing that was not infected and if they entered it, it would become infected guaranteed. My dad asked him what the chances were of her recovery and he said, “If she makes it through the night, she may have a chance.”

I texted my sister and my son at school that it didn’t look good. My sister got there about 11am just as the ICU doctor asked us about DNR information, did we want any type of heroic efforts. My dad gave her a mini sermon and then we all said NO. My mom would not have wanted that, she said it over and over. We went into a room, the Chaplin came in. Lots of tears. They stopped administering the meds to keep her pressure up.

When they called us in to be with her. I kissed her, told her I loved her and I went to get my son. At 1220pm on April 17, 2015, my sister called to say she was gone just as I pulled into the school. They held her hands till the last beat. I am okay that I wasn’t there. It was hard enough to see her intubated again, let alone watch that. I used to work at that hospital, my friends came to be with us that knew my mom. My cousin works there, my God Mother and sister were there. She was surrounded by love when she transitioned. My sweet, tiny mom was snatched from us by a mystery illness. I NEVER considered in helping her get dressed for the ER that she wouldn’t come home. I had cleaned her room and sprayed with Lysol as if she had a cold – 33 hours from the time my dad woke me up, she was gone.

We never found out where the infection was, we have suspicions but no facts. Since then I have thrown myself into educating myself and others about this condition. We understand that had she survived, she probably would have been more compromised than she ever was in her life. Her case was textbook, cold, pain, low blood pressure, organs shutting down, unknown origin. Had we gotten her to the ER any sooner, at 72 years of age, I believe the result would have been the same. I just wish we could have had some clue that she had an infection. It wasn’t the dialysis site. They did determine that. We miss her dearly but in her death I hope to bring light to my family and friends to be aware of the signs and early detection.

Source: by Sandy Skinner Bradford (Anita's daughter)