Jenna Mul

I developed a large abscess in my leg, which required two weeks of IV antibiotics and daily trips to the operating room. I was sent home on antibiotics.

A week passed when I felt like I was getting better. But on a Thursday night, my leg started to hurt quite badly, and there was an area of red, spongy skin near the incisions from all the surgeries. I called the nurse advisor line and was asked to take my temperature. When I checked it, my temperature was 96.5. The nurse said it would be fine to wait until morning to see a doctor. So I went to sleep.

I woke up at 4:30 AM. My abdomen was so painful I could hardly breathe. Every muscle in my body hurt. My head was pounding. And I could tell I was about to have a blast of diarrhea. I got up from the couch, intending to go through my bedroom into the bathroom. I was walking past the bed and everything went black and I collapsed. The sound woke up my husband. I couldn’t move, and my abdomen and leg and head hurt worse than anything I had ever experienced. I managed to barely croak to my husband that he needed to call an ambulance. Then the vomiting started, and I couldn’t move enough to keep it from getting all over my chest.

When the ambulance arrived, they carried me out of my house. I couldn’t see anything – just blackness. I was in so much pain. I could feel my heart racing. They had the stretcher waiting just out the door, with the front raised to keep me sitting up. As soon as they put me down, I passed out again. I woke up in the ambulance. Both paramedics were starting IVs. They took my blood pressure. 40/20. They took my temperature – 104.5. Even after they laid me flat, all I could see was blackness. I struggled so hard to just form a coherent sentence. I couldn’t do it.

I was taken to the closest hospital. The first thing they did was to tip my bed head down. My vision came back, but I was confused and miserable, and thinking I was dying. At the hospital, they gave me a two-liter fluid bolus. It brought my blood pressure up to 55/30. My pulse was 240, so I was also given several medications to try to slow it down (I have had superventricular tachycardia for years. 240 is not an unheard of heart rate for me). My temperature was up to 105.3. The hospital is very small, with only four beds in the ER and no ability to treat critically I’ll patients. Once they got my pulse down to 180, an ambulance was called and I was transferred to a much better hospital about 40 minutes away.

When they put me on the stretcher, they were unable to keep me in the head down position. My vision went black again. I started to shake violently. I couldn’t control my body movements at all. I was given another two-liter fluid bolus in the ambulance but my blood pressure dropped back down to 40/18. I only know this because I obtained a copy of the run report.

When we arrived at the hospital, a mob of doctors, my surgeon included, and a bunch of nurses quickly assembled. I was again placed into an inverted head down position. My vision cleared over the next few minutes. My temperature was now 106, my blood pressure was 40/15. Fluids were started in a rapid infuser. They started a central line under my right collar bone.

I was taken to radiology and had a chest X-ray, ultrasound of my abdomen, and a CT of my leg to check if there was another abscess. The report came back that there was no evidence of infection in my abdomen, my leg indeed had another abscess, and my central line had flipped up into my neck and not down to my heart. While in radiology, I started having a really hard time breathing and we could actually hear the bubbles in the fluid that was rapidly filling my lungs.

They inserted a catheter and several antibiotics were added to my IV. I was given levophed to try to raise my blood pressure. They kept me head down.

I told my husband that I was dying and asked him to call my best friend. My friend arrived within a few minutes. The oxygen mask on my face made me feel like I was suffocating. But I couldn’t move to take it off. I was rushed up to ICU. Once there, my surgeon said my abscess needed to be drained and washed out. I assumed he would take me to surgery to do so. But he said I was too unstable to survive anesthesia. The incision, debridement, and irrigation were done with me laying head down in my ICU bed. Because of the sepsis, my blood was a very abnormal PH. This caused the lidocaine in my leg to be ineffective. I felt every slice of the scalpel, every bit of the debridement. I was so fuzzy mentally and already in so much pain that I screamed every time he did something.

Once the abscess was drained, my central line was removed and reinserted. X-ray showed that this time the line was right by my heart like it was supposed to be.

The next 48 hours, I was given so many different medications. I received fluids, the levophed, the antibiotics, steroids and heart medications. Everything was set up for intubation, but I was able to get by with oxygen and positive airway pressure. My white count was very high and even with a cooling blanket and ice packs all over my body, my temperature stayed between 104 and 105. I was having tons of dry heaves, my lungs had a lot of fluid in them which made it tough to breathe. My blood cultures all grew out several kinds of bacteria.

A week in ICU was followed with a week in a step down unit, and then three days on the general medical floor. My kidneys shut down. My liver enzymes were really elevated. My spleen was enlarged. I couldn’t keep anything down. Everything hurt so much.

I was lucky. My treatment was immediate. The paramedics recognized that it was sepsis. The fluids they gave me temporarily raised my blood pressure. I collapsed at 4 AM and was in ICU with all the right meds and support measures by 8 AM. My surgeon told me that had I waited even an hour, I would have ended up on a ventilator. Two more hours and I wouldn’t have survived.