Our son, Christian was a healthy, active loving 5-year-old with no history of medical issues. During our normal Sunday morning, he had woken up with a raspy voice and a slight fever. To us, we had thought he might have gotten a cold so we gave him fever/cold medication and he seemed fine afterward. During the evening, he developed a gagging cough where we had thought he was going to throw up. The gagged cough occurred once and eventually, he fell asleep. About two hours later, he woke up letting us know that he could not breathe. My husband took …

Stella Kay Hall was born on 7/8/17 at 2:02 am in the morning. She was 6 lbs and 8 ounces of pure joy. Stella was twin B. She was welcomed into this world with her twin brother, Nash. They were the perfect addition to our family. Stella loved to be held. She was the sweetest girl. After a trip to Colorado for spring break, Stella spiked a fever. We took her in to our pediatrician immediately the next morning, Monday 3/19/18. She was diagnosed with a viral infection.  They performed a deep suction on her and told us she had …

My life changed forever on July 19, 2015, when I lost the love of my life, my best friend, my husband Demetrius Purvis to this awful, scary and mysterious disease called sepsis. My husband was a healthy 37-year-old, who had recently lost weight. He walked our dogs three miles and day and thought he was doing everything right to ensure we’d be together till we were old and gray. My husband had decided to take a week off work for a mini vacation to celebrate my birthday. During his vacation he mentioned that he was more tired than usual, but …

December 19,2018, I went to the hospital expecting to have a routine outpatient laparoscopic cholecystectomy (gallbladder removal). (Sepsis and Surgery) My surgeon kept me in the hospital another day and a gastroenterologist completed an endoscopic procedure to remove stones from a bile duct and inserted a stent in my bile duct on Thursday afternoon. Sometime in the early morning hours of Friday, December 21st my husband was contacted by the hospital because I was in excruciating pain. After my blood pressure tanked, they had to split my abdominal muscles in half to clean out my abdominal cavity because I had …

I went into septic shock in December of 2016 due to a perforated bowel obstruction caused by my J-pouch that was inserted from being diagnosed with F.A.P. (familial adenomatous polyposis) when I was 16 years old. (Sepsis and Perforated Bowel) I was in a coma for a week and I wrote this poem of my journey to not only tell my story, but to let other survivors know they are not alone and not going crazy like I did. And to also inform friends and family of survivors of what they may be going through and to show them that …