Lora Witte

It all started on my 35th birthday. I was at home and I suddenly started to feel extreme pain in my lower abdomen. At first I thought it might be bad gas pains so I took anti-gas medication. When that didn’t help, I started to get concerned because I knew that I had an IUD. The pain was severe enough that I couldn’t stand up straight.

I went to the ER because I was concerned about the IUD. They did a quick exam and gave me a urine test and decided it was a simple bladder infection. I was skeptical because I had had many urinary tract infections (UTIs) in the past and none of them ever felt like this. (Sepsis and Urinary Tract Infections) They gave me an antibiotic. I stayed home from work the next day because I felt sick all over. Later that week I went back to work and went back to my classes. I remember that I still felt pain in my abdomen and my lab partner was concerned but I told her I was taking an antibiotic and that it should clear up.

I started to feel somewhat better but I felt completely run down for several weeks after that. I didn’t feel the extreme pain anymore so I just carried on with normal life. It was about three weeks after this night in the ER that I suddenly became deathly sick. I remember shaking violently and feeling chilled. It scared me so I asked my son to call my boyfriend at work and have him come home. My son was really scared and told me that I looked like the girl in the Exorcist. He covered me with four or five heavy blankets and I couldn’t stop shivering. When my fiancé got there, he took me to Urgent Care. When I got there, the nurse could see that I was extremely sick and she took me back to the doctor’s exam room right away. She took my blood pressure and it was 70/40. At this point, I was vomiting and I could not sit up because I felt so weak. She told me to just stay there and eventually the doctor came in. They gave me a blood test and my labs came back normal. At that point, I was told it was the flu and that it would go away in a few days. They sent me home and told me to rest.

I rested in bed for several days and I had never felt so sick in my life. Then I started to hyperventilate and I had pain in my chest. I was talking with my brother on the phone when it hit me and I couldn’t talk anymore because I couldn’t breathe. We went back to Urgent Care after a few days of not getting any better. I told the doctor that I had been sick and that now it hurt to breathe. He told me I had pleurisy and sent me home again. This continued through the weekend. I was getting very scared and I didn’t know what to do anymore.

Finally, after an entire week of feeling so sick, I woke up on Monday morning to call in sick to work once again. When I got up, I felt a lot of pain in my lower abdomen. Something told me that this was very serious and I asked my fiancé to call an ambulance. He didn’t know what to think and he asked me if I was sure. I said yes, I’m absolutely sure. I told him that no one would take me seriously unless I showed up in the ER by ambulance. At this point, I was starting to cough up mucus and I was doubled over in pain.

When the ambulance arrived, I explained to them that I had been severely sick for over a week. They also thought it wasn’t serious and said that it was probably pleurisy and that I just needed to relax. They made me walk to the ambulance. Once I got into the ambulance, I think I bottomed out because I don’t remember anything after they pulled into the hospital.

The next thing I remember is waking up 10 days later and being told that I needed to have a hysterectomy or else I was going to die. I cried and cried and cried. I had no idea what was going on. I was just told that I was extremely sick and that I didn’t have much choice.

Apparently I had been admitted to the hospital the day they brought me in but it took them until that evening to realize I was in shock. They pumped my body with fluids to raise my blood pressure and they put me on a ventilator that night. I was admitted to the ICU and put into a medical coma for several days. I don’t remember anything from the time that the ambulance pulled into the hospital garage.

I went into surgery after being in ICU for 10 days. They did a complete hysterectomy and they also cleaned out my abdominal region. They also gave me an appendectomy for good measure.

I also had a pleural effusion and was not able to breath on my own. Several days after the hysterectomy, they had to do surgery on my lungs to remove the infection that had gone there as well. The pain in my chest was not pleurisy, it was due to my pleural cavity filling up with fluid. I was on a ventilator for 3 weeks and in the ICU for a month. Finally, the day came when they had me get out of bed for the first time. I was in complete denial about just how sick I really was. I was no longer able to stand up or walk. I was so weak I couldn’t even hold a book in my hand anymore.

When I was well enough, they sent me to physical therapy where I was given a walker and slowly began to take my first steps again. I will never forget how it felt to go from feeling on top of the world one day to being to sick to even use a bathroom on my own or to walk on my own. While in physical therapy, I was still getting sick. They were still giving me antibiotic via IV and I couldn’t hold any food down so I had to go back to the hospital for awhile. They kept having to give me blood transfusions as well. Finally, after being hospitalized for two straight months, I was able to go home.

I recovered at home for another two months before I slowly returned to work and school. To this day, I’m still not as strong as I used to be and this was five years ago now. But I’m truly grateful to be alive. I have since decided to commit my life to healthcare so that I can help others. I’m in school for echocardiography and I’m loving it.

My only wish is that other healthcare providers would take flu symptoms more seriously. No one believed that I was so truly sick. I understand that the blood tests were misleading, but if they had continued to wait until my lab results showed an abnormal white blood cell count, I would be dead. I’m so very grateful for the doctor who finally figured out that I had an infection due to an IUD. I was told that if I hadn’t called the ambulance that day, I would have died in my bed at home. I’m amazed that I survived for an entire week while being septic. If you are a healthcare provider who is reading this, please don’t ignore a patient who keeps coming back with progressively worse flu-like symptoms. Listen to the patient when they tell you that it is abnormal for them to be so sick.