Christina McMaster

I will never forget the faces of my children when they learned that I could die. The fear and sadness that they experienced is so heartbreaking. They are 16, 12, and 10. The terrifying fear and grief also affected my husband, but he tried to remain strong for me and for the kids. I should have never gotten septic.

I have multiple sclerosis and I am on Tysabri which is an IV infusion once a month. It has helped me tremendously for the past three years to not have exacerbations. It lowers my immune system drastically and I am well aware that my ability to fight infection is almost nothing. (Sepsis and Impaired Immune System)  I woke up vomiting on one morning. I have never vomited so hard in my life. I had severe lower right abdominal pain. I did not have a fever but I was getting dehydrated. My husband took me to the ER that afternoon after calling the primary care doctor, and I explained to them about the drug I was on and they did not listen. They just gave me fluid, pain meds, and sent me home. They treated me like I was a drug seeker.

Well, there were two more trips that week, once to the ER again and then to urgent care. My neurologist told me to go back to ER and have them call her, but they would not speak to her. They all said that my WBC [white blood cell count] was normal, so I was fine. I continued to try to explain it to them, but no one listened to the fact that I was immunocompromised and that my white blood cell count would not increase because the IV med Tysabri prevents it from rising.

Then after eight days in agony, I was lying down in bed and I was getting more and more short of breath. I grabbed my O2 sat monitor [measures the amount of oxygen in the blood] from the nightstand and I watched my sats drop from 95% to 75% in a matter of seconds. I could not get up to get my oxygen and thankfully my husband had called my mother to check on me. When she arrived, she immediately call 911. I was going downhill extremely rapidly. Finally after the EMS got me to the ER, one doctor listened about the Tysabri drug and looked up exactly what it was. He checked my C-Reactive Protein.

I was in and out the rest of the night. I woke up in ICU and I was informed that I was septic and they were unsure if I would make it through the night. It was determined that I had appendicitis and because no one listened, they missed it. My daughter is a gymnast and when they got me a little stabilized four days later, they did an appendectomy. This was on the day of one of her meets. I have never missed a gymnastics meet, but this time I did. She went down and took all of her worry and all of her fear and she scored a 9.725 on her vault! She stood on the awards stand getting a first place gold medal with tears in her eyes and her coach said that those tears she held up her trophy and said this is for you mommy! She came to see at the hospital with a trophy and gold medal for first place.

My kids, all three of them lived in fear for days and my husband did not know from second to second if I would live or die. But I survived, and many said I should not have made it. All of my organs were infected except the brain and heart. I made it, and it is the most terrifying experience I had ever gone through. When sepsis attacks it takes over so rapidly that you can longer think in a matter of seconds, you are in a severe life-threatening situation and it is scary. Thankfully I am here to see my all of kids grow up and my husband still has his wife.