Victoria Gilbert

(Victoria submitted two stories – one a tribute to her father Henry Groit and this one, her story of survival.)

Following is my own survival story…whether or not battling a constant urinary infection all year had anything to do with this or not…

On Wednesday of Labor Day weekend in 2009, I began having kidney stone pains like I had never had before.

By Friday evening i was rushed on a 45-minute drive to emergency as I lay in and out of consciousness. Once there I was hooked up to fluids for pain and to bring up my blood pressure, which was down to 50/45, and a fever of 104*, a white blood cell count of 25,000. A CAT scan revealed a 6mm kidney stone stuck in my right kidney and SEPSIS. (Sepsis and Kidney Stones)

I was admitted and on Saturday afternoon I had a stent put in to release the infection in my kidney. I was completely out of it all day other than vomiting and expelling the kidney infection. Sunday was not much better, than on Monday morning, the doctor in charge said he was releasing me because it was his last day as a doctor at that hospital!!!

I was STILL extremely sick. For 3 weeks it took all the energy I had to get out of bed in the morning, shower, then sit in a chair all day. I lost 15 pounds these 3 weeks. By the third week, I had pre-op tests done to remove the stent. On Friday, 3 weeks to the day, all tests came back normal.

Well, by 6pm that evening, I started to feel sick again with weird pains. A friend and I were going for a short drive by the beach. I was driving and I had to stop the car, get out and yell that something was wrong with me. I could no longer drive. I lost my vision and passed out. He had to race me back to emergency, this time to a different hospital, different town. I was aware enough to tell them to check for sepsis.

Once again, my blood pressure was 50/45, white count up, and CAT scan revealed the stone and stent. Being a Friday night, in a small town, no doctor was available to treat me so I was ambulanced 65 miles to another hospital. On Saturday, the urologist did his best to explain to me that I should have NEVER had that stent in for 3 weeks, because it created SEPSIS all over again. It took 2 1/2 days to break my 104* fever in order for him to remove the stent and to laser 3 kidney stones!! I was released on Tuesday evening this time feeling better than the first time I was released to go home.