Lily Tock

I was born 11 weeks early and developed sepsis at 3 days old. It was originally in my tummy button and spread into the blood stream. I was already poorly enough, born 11 weeks early, so the sepsis really did make me poorly but I fought and fought and eventually beat sepsis!! 16 years later due to a health condition called gastroparesis/delayed gastric emptying.

I can’t eat or drink and in May 2016, I couldn’t even tolerate tube feeds so it was decided I would get a PICC line into my heart and start TPN (total parental nutrition). This basically means nutrition into the veins. So I went to theatre and got my PICC line and a week or two later I was going to theatre again to remove some ulcers, but before theatre I knew something was wrong my PICC line looked gross and infected and I just knew it was infected. (Sepsis and Invasive Devices) Due to the PICC line being in my heart, they are supposed to start treatment after any suspicion of infection to reduce risk or bloodstream infection. The surgeons were called and they said it wasn’t infected.

When I came out of theatre, I was in severe pain, which wasn’t right with all the pain relief I’d had, and I had spiking temperatures, my temperature went up to 39.9 which nearly caused seizures and my sats where dropping meaning I needed oxygen.

The doctors came and took cultures and we eventually got the dreaded news I had sepsis. But I didn’t just have one bug in my blood stream I had 4, so I was basically fighting 4x sepsis all at once. I don’t remember much more as I was on very strong medicines and really poorly, etc., but I know I wasn’t well and my parents where told I could die and people were visiting and just shocked to see me like that.

Luckily I beat sepsis 2 weeks later, with horrible side effects from it. Sepsis caused many things including my bladder to stop, my bowels to stop my stomach to stop, a blood clot and more. Sepsis is deadly and more awareness needs to be spread!