Garth Voigt

A little over a week ago I was discharged from the hospital having survived sepsis (and renal failure, respiratory failure, cardiac arrest and a poisoned metabolism). All I kept thinking was that statistically if I survived, two other people I’ll never know didn’t make it. People didn’t understand why I was so upset about this. Two people, maybe with family, kids, etc., who may have been really decent people were gone while me with my cynicism and PTSD lived.

I work in biotech and pharmaceutical industries and I really first became aware of the great unmet need to find a cure, etc., and the high mortality rate in 1999. Unfortunately not much has changed in the world of sepsis.

We can only really guess how I got it, but the following didn’t help: I was putting in 15 hour days at a prominent and very stressful pharma company. Somewhere along the line, I developed undetected bilateral pneumonia (Sepsis and Pneumonia) that went untreated and swarmed throughout my body. (I have a history of contracting pneumonia and feeling fine. Until that moment it had always been detected. Not this time).

It’s one thing to know the facts about sepsis. It’s another thing entirely to experience them. Like I never knew that the disease can slowly make you go insane in the weeks leading up to your death. My memory began to fade in the days leading up to D day, as I call it (delusion, diagnosis, death). I have no memory of this, but on D day, I was found two cities away from home wandering around in my boxers and a Polo shirt. Someone called an ambulance. The paramedics at first assumed I was drunk, but they found me alert and lucid. Then my BAC came back negative for alcohol.

Later I was tested for drugs. Also negative. However my 102.5 F fever did get attention at the hospital. Then I began having difficulty breathing. If I understand the doctors’ reports, about the time they figured out I had sepsis I began going into septic shock. I was quickly put into a chemically induced coma and my body temp was lowered to buy time to try and figure out a solution. When you get to septic shock, it’s often too late. Things became worse before they got better. People were getting ready to say their good-byes, but I bounced back.