Sandra Guthrie

My mother passed away in April of 2016. Sepsis is what took her.  She had been through a lot of health struggles such as, a massive heart attack, cellulitis, cancer, COPD and many others. She was no longer able to walk due to the severity of some of her illnesses. She had a catheter for urinating and this led to bladder infections. (Sepsis and Urinary Tract Infections) She would be hospitalized and put on IV antibiotics and sent home.

In 2015 my mother was diagnosed as septic for the first time. From what was understood, a kidney infection was the cause. She was out on heavy antibiotics and was cleared after a few weeks. After this she continued to get random infections. Such as in November 2015, she was diagnosed with a heart infection which needed about 6 weeks of antibiotics. After this was finally cleared, she was diagnosed with c.diff. This in turn caused another urinary tract infection on top of that.  It was decided in January 2016 that the doctors would put in a suprapubic catheter to cut down on the infections in her bladder. It seemed to work for a few weeks before she found herself in the hospital again for a urinary tract infection.

In early April, she was sent to the hospital because she was disoriented and unresponsive. This led to her final kidney infection, as well as her final diagnosis of c. diff. (Sepsis and C. Difficile)

Around the second week of April, we were told that the antibiotics for the urinary tract infection were no longer working and that her body had become septic.  At this point, the sepsis was found too late. They tried to treat for about 5 days with no improvement. My mom was put on hospice to make herself comfortable for the remaining parts of her life. She held on for about 10 days after the antibiotics were stopped. The sepsis had taken her mind fairly quickly, but not her body.

She was in a significant amount of pain as she died, however she was on medication that would try to get her to sleep through the pain. My mom died on April 25th, 2016, a few months after her 58th birthday. She was survived by her four children, youngest being 26 and oldest at 30.  Before this, I was so careless about UTIs. I didn’t think something like this could progress from an infection. It’s a sad way to lose someone, and hard to understand why.

Source: by Victoria Hamel (Sandra’s daughter)