Maureen Aveyard

In the early hours of April 10th 2016 the life of my loving wife, Maureen was taken by sepsis.

On the morning of Friday 8th April Maureen awoke with sickness and diarrhea. As she worked in a care home and had previously picked up similar symptoms from infections such as norovirus, this wasn’t that unusual, and I went off to work as normal.

I got home from work earlier than usual at about 3p.m. and Maureen was still showing the same symptoms. At one point she went into a fit of shaking, but as this wasn’t seen again, it was soon forgotten.
Maureen didn’t eat or drink much at all on that Friday.

Saturday morning came to the same symptoms, Maureen ate a little and had a small drink of water. We were both convinced that all would be well if we could get through 48 hours of this.

In the early hours of Sunday 8th Maureen told me that she was having difficulty breathing and all she could see was a purple tree, where ever she looked.

I phoned 111 and within a couple of minutes a paramedic was attending to Maureen. After hooking her up to his monitoring equipment he said to the ambulance staff, who arrived slightly later, “Full sepsis”. He then turned to Maureen and said,”I wish you’d called earlier love”.

I accompanied Maureen to the hospital in Leeds UK, and was very soon told that her heart had stopped, but it had been restarted.

Just a few minutes later, I was told that her heart had stopped again and asked if I would like to go into the rests room. I accepted the offer and watched as a marvellous team of medical staff tried to resuscitate my dear wife.

At 4:15 she was pronounced dead.

1a Sepsis
1b Pneumonia

I later checked my wife phone, and although I hadn’t seen any shaking episodes on the Saturday, she had related in a text message to a colleague that she “can’t stop shaking”.

Following Maureen’s death, one of our 4 daughters and my nephew’s wife made a marvellous attempt  to raise awareness of sepsis, and raised money for Sepsis Trust UK.

We all love and miss Maureen and are still in disbelief that this could happen to us so quickly. (Sepsis and Pneumonia)

Source: Melvyn (Maureen's husband)