Joe Henderson

On May 20th, 2005, a Saturday, my 64-year-old husband of 42 years, Joe, came home from work feeling weak. He was a bank vice-president and worked at the bank one Saturday a month.

He said he felt an overwhelming urge to lay down during the morning at work, so he went to a private room and rested on the floor for several minutes. I noticed he seemed ‘out of it’ and his speech was slurred.

I drove him to the hospital emergency room where he staggered into the waiting room. He revived and seemed fine. The doctor examining him said, “he may have pneumonia,” which he stated could be asymptomatic in older people. (Sepsis and Pneumonia) This seemed an odd diagnosis as Joe had no respiratory symptoms.

Joe had a chronic slow moving leukemia called CLL and the doctor was informed of this, as well as the fact that Joe had had his spleen removed in 20001 as a consequence of this disease. (Sepsis and Impaired Immune System) Joe had a sandwich in the emergency room examining area and seemed fine, back to his old self, no symptoms apparent. As a precaution, the emergency room doctor ordered him to stay overnight.

I left about 10 p.m. The next morning at 8 a.m. I received a call from the hospital doctor assigned him. Joe was in septic shock and might not survive. I learned later that no one checked on him during the course of the night. When the nurse saw him in the morning, the chart read he told her, “This is the worst I have ever felt.”

Over the course of the next month, Joe lay in a coma, his extremities blackening. His kidneys failed and he was on dialysis. He was given intravenous antibiotics.

From the hospital he went to rehab for a month. He came home for a few days to recuperate further, and began his banking career again on the phone. He had physical therapists come to the home. His employer was very kind and supportive. Joe died not quite five months after the septic shock incident, on October 8th, 2005. He was in the hospital at the time.

He spent most of the time in the hospital after the initial sepsis. His body had continual bouts of severe infections requiring massive doses of antibiotics. Our family was shocked by the events that transpired. We wished someone had educated us about the signs and symptoms of sepsis. We wished the emergency room doctor had recognized the possibility of sepsis, tested for white blood cell count, and administered antibiotics before he developed full-blown septic shock 10 hours after being admitted to the hospital.

Source: by Shirley Henderson Colee (Joe's wife)