Dorreen Anne Rookes

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I am writing this story on behalf of my late Mom. My Mom was a healthy, vibrant, active, happy 59-year-old woman. She was truly in the best years of her life, travelling with friends, retired, and looking after herself. In January of 2016, she and her friend went on a 6-week trip to Arizona to get away from the Canadian snow.

A week before my mom’s death, she began having back pain, chills and fever. She at first thought it to be something to do with her menopause, but soon figured it was likely a flu. She went into the emergency room on Friday February 5 with extreme back pain. It was getting too much to tolerate. They checked her over and did a CT scan of her kidneys to rule out anything that it could be. They could not find anything and they prescribed her painkillers as they thought maybe she pulled a muscle.

The two returned to their campsite for the night. The next day, my Mom slept a lot and took the painkillers. She began to vomit but they thought it was from the painkillers. She died in the early hours of Feb 7. She got up shortly after midnight to use the bathroom and she collapsed. The ambulance was called, and after working on her for hours at the same hospital,they lost her. We lost her!!

The emergency doctors said they did not have a cause for her death, just that it was natural, perhaps a blood clot.

After having an autopsy, and requesting the medical records from the hospital, we have established that her cause of death was a Strep B bacterial infection, from a urinary tract infection that spread to the kidneys and eventually to her bloodstream. (Sepsis and Urinary Tract Infections) My mom died from endocarditis, a bacterial infection that ate a hole through her mitral valve. The infection however was also in her kidneys, liver and lungs.

Her blood culture returned to the hospital a day after her death as these take a few days, and it was taken on the 5th when she visited the emergency.

I am so sad to have lost her on this vacation. My mom lived with us and was a very involved grandmother to my 3 children. If only we had known we would not see her again… My heart will never be the same. It is broken over a death that seems so pointless and stoppable. I am so saddened that emergency room doctors do not know more about the symptoms of sepsis as she could have maybe survived if they knew the symptoms and started treatment at her first visit. Thank you for this website and all you do to bring awareness to this terrible illness.

Source: by Kimberly Zapesocki (Dorreen's daughter)

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