Frank Louis Speranza

My father passed away in the fall of 2004 just a few days shy of his 70th birthday. He had lived with Crohn’s disease for many years. (Sepsis and Autoimmune Diseases) His “bouts” with it would come and go. My stepmother would lecture him about watching his diet, as there were certain foods that would flare up the condition. It was certainly inconvenient for him but he lived a normal life. He worked hard, loved his dogs, enjoyed his home and his family. No one ever thought the Crohn’s could be fatal.

I got a call from my stepmother one afternoon. She told me that my father was in the hospital and he wasn’t doing well. It turned out that he’d had another of his bouts with the Crohn’s and ended up in the hospital with dehydration. This had happened before. He just needed fluids to regain his strength. The next day she called again and said that he’d been moved to ICU and put on a ventilator. It made no sense! I started to make arrangements to fly from my home in FL to where he was in NY. He died before I got there. The cause, we were told, was sepsis. I’d never heard the term before. It seemed so unbelievable that you could walk into the hospital dehydrated and die a few days later.

Thank you for bringing awareness about this very deadly disease. I hope that health care providers as well as patients will become more vigilant in diagnosis and treatment so that we can save people from suffering the same fate as my father.

Source: by Denelle Christensen (Frank's daughter)