Jill Kogan Blake

I survived sepsis and its side effects because of excellent emergency room and ICU care at Marin General Hospital and incredible after care and Acute Rehab care at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco.

At 1:00 AM on the night after the Oscars 2014, I had a shooting, grabbing, worst pain ever in the stomach area on my left side. Imagine the mild discomfort of labor magnified on uber steroids. Unbeknownst to me, my descending colon had burst or ruptured because of diverticulitus which I had had no symptoms or knowledge. I was in septic shock. (Sepsis and Perforated Bowel)

I was taken to Marin General Hospital by the Fire department and woke up in ICU 5 1/2 weeks later from an induced coma. My room looked like NASA with all the monitors that were connected to me. I was told that I had been code blue four times with a fever over 106.

Because of the morphine required to keep me in the coma, I had lost 25 pounds (a lot of it muscle) and was even too weak to hold a pencil or the smallest iphone. I could not control any of my normal body functions like swallowing (so I could not eat or be fed through my mouth), sitting up, moving in any deliberate way without help nor could I talk. I had had a tracheotomy so that I could breathe and still had a tube in my throat. I had a feeding tube in my nose.
When I awoke from the coma, I remember my first thought was that I had been shot in my stomach seven times. Looking down I realized that that “in the coma” knowledge emanated from the seven tubes in my stomach that had been inserted in order to continue to drain the sepsis and peritonitis infection out of my body. It had been necessary to give me an ileostomy, which was taken down 9 months after my my initial hospital admit. My skin was the color of burnt sienna straight from a tube of oil paint, so I looked and felt as I had been left out in desert for weeks with no oasis to quench my thirst. In the course of my post coma recovery, it would be a few weeks before I was allowed to eat or drink anything at all because of the danger of my choking. After passing three swallowing tests, I was finally allowed my first drink of water. Even now, I can never imagine ever being as thirsty for plain ever again.

Obviously I was very scared before I went to the hospital and even more scared and freaked out when I came out of the coma. I had to relearn almost everything a baby learns in the first few years of life: to turn over, to hold my head up, to sit up, to stand up, to walk, to hold a spoon and feed myself, to reach for objects and not drop them because they were too heavy, to talk, to be potty trained and to develop manual dexterity so that I could make marks with pencils, crayons etc.

This was the most difficult test of my life. I was on painkillers for months but fortunately never became an addict. I had a PICC line in my arm that ran into my heart. I was hospitalized again and again for days and months at a time. The emergency room became my second home, because I was always experiencing extreme dehydration and low blood pressure, returning numerous times through 2014. I had a few more operations, and nurses and IVs 24/7 at home when I was not in the hospital throughout the year.

With the heroic, devoted, unbelievably excellent, kind, compassionate and cheer-leading care and support of my doctors, nurses, long term boyfriend, family and friends, I have completely recovered. My hair, a lot of which fell out because it goes into a resting phase when one’s body is under such attack and high fevers, has grown back.

I am a crusader now to educate others about the the dangers of contracting Sepsis. I try to tell everyone who has any kind of stomach issue and even strangers about my experience so that they will be informed and vigilant about Sepsis and Diverticulitis. And hypervigilant in regard to the flu or pneumonia or any infection or cut or rash that hurts and does not heal, no matter how seemingly insignificant.

I still get emotional about my whole experience on anniversaries;

• of the initial hospital admit,
• of the day I woke up from my coma,
• of the day I was able to talk again on my own after having the speaking ball removed from my neck,
• of the day I was able to descend a flight of stairs and walk with a cane out of the acute rehab hospital and go home for the first time,
• of the many operations and of the surgeries.

It took a long time to crawl out of the hole both physically and mentally. I feel like I am rebuilding my soul brick by brick. I’ll never recover from the feeling of gratitude and grace that I am still alive, that I dodged an enormous bullet, and that I am now still searching everyday to understand why I was and am so very fortunate to be here. Having been an artist most of my life, I am finally drawing again. The only parts of me not affected by my inferno and descent into the underworld guarded by Cerberus are my mind and my heart…if anything I am so much more intensely thought full and compassionate and empathetic and thankful than ever before…and so grateful for being able to welcome another spring.