Karen Vincek

I became ill with sepsis in February of 2009 when I was 21 years old. I had recently graduated with my bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Arizona and had moved back to upstate New York to live with my parents. My ordeal started when I was visiting a friend in Boston for the weekend. Early in the morning of Valentine’s Day I became violently ill with abdominal pain.

I figured I had eaten bad food and did not feel that my condition required medical attention. After half of the day of being very sick I started to feel slightly better. I stopped vomiting and the pain in my abdomen subsided and I figured the worst of it was over.

The next day I rode the train back to my home in upstate New York. During the train ride, I was still feeling sore and slightly sick, as if I had the flu. The thought crossed my mind that if I was truly sick and needed help while on the train I would be in a bad situation. I was traveling alone and far from home. I had serious chills when on the train but I kept taking ibuprofen to help with the pain. When I arrived at the train station, my mother and sister noticed I did not look myself but the illness did not seem like anything out of the ordinary.

The next two days I felt as though I was recovering from the flu. My symptoms did not seem to get worse but I was not feeling better. The third day of the illness, I was still feeling like I was battling the flu. I camped out on the couch and kept taking ibuprofen to ease my abdominal pains and body aches. My father came home from work for lunch and checked in on me, and I let him know I was alright. About thirty minutes after he went back to work, I started to feel very ill and could not stop shaking. I took more ibuprofen and was waiting for it to kick in when my mother came home from work at 1:30 pm. She felt as though something might be seriously wrong so she came home to check on me. I was blue and shaking violently but still insisted that I was fine and did not need to see a doctor. My mother considered whether to call an ambulance or to drive me the five minutes to the local hospital. She decided that it would be faster to drive me herself.

Upon arriving in the emergency department I felt very faint, with chest pains, and could not stand on my own. I was immediately taken to the cardiac department and hooked to monitors. After being brought to a bed, my chills went away and I felt fine. I was even joking with my mom and wanting to know when I was able to go home. The emergency staff ran a battery of tests including urine and blood samples. The results showed that something was wrong but the doctors were unsure what was causing the vast discrepancies in my labs. I was about to have a CAT scan and while drinking the contrast solution I suddenly felt very spacey. My vision started to close in and I felt as if I was falling asleep. My mother instantly knew something was wrong and alerted the nurse. She took my blood pressure and it was 60/30. I was crashing.

When I awoke from the medically induced coma I had no idea what had happened to me. I was on a ventilator and could not move on my own. I was surrounded from family members from all over the country but could not figure out why I was so sick. Even after everything, I still did not understand the gravity of the situation. I was in a coma for most of the serious moments so I was unaware of how close to death I was. I was unable to be transferred to a larger hospital because of my unstable status and how quickly the illness progressed. Seven days after being admitted to the emergency room I was taken off of the ventilator. Unfortunately, because of the sepsis and the efforts to save my life I developed a blood clot in my left hand at the wrist. My hand turned black and necrotized because I was too sick for it to be corrected when it was first discovered.

After everything, I learned that I had sepsis due to two kidney stones in my left kidney. One of the stones was blocking my ureter, causing my body to be overrun with bacteria. (Sepsis and Kidney Stones) I remember having the symptoms of urinary tract infections during the six months prior to my illness but they never progressed enough to where I felt as though I need to see a doctor. (Sepsis and Urinary Tract Infections) Even if I had visited a doctor I probably would have been prescribed the usual antibiotics for a UTI and the stones would have gone undetected. Shortly after my month long stay in the hospital I had the fingers from my left hand amputated. I had two more surgeries over the course of a year to correct damage to my left hand. (Sepsis and Amputations)

It took me almost a year after my illness to feel myself again. Currently I am able to do most things, with the exception of playing my viola, something I really loved to do in my free time. I try to always keep using my left hand to keep my dexterity strong. Considering that the prognosis in the hospital was an entire whole left hand amputation, I feel very lucky. Also, many of the doctors in the hospital were not optimistic of my situation and attempted to prepare my family for the sincere likelihood that I would not survive. I owe my life to the staff of my local hospital and the dedication of my family, especially my mother, through the long year of rehabilitation I experienced. I am now pursuing my Master’s in social work degree from SUNY Albany and I hope to work in a hospital to support others who are experiencing severe trauma. I hope that I am able to use my experience to help others in their struggle to preserve. Sepsis has changed my life dramatically but has also redefined how and why I live my life.