Andie Mae

I was sick on and off four times in a month and a half, which I just attributed to my less than ironclad immune system being exposed to baby and daycare germs. The third time I got sick, I thought, “Ok really that’s enough! I’m going in to urgent care to see if we can nip this in the bud.” But all the tests came back negative. And then the next few days I felt back to normal.

Well, a week or so later, I start feeling sick again. Thursday morning I woke up and was definitely sick. Same drill. Fever on and off in the 99-101. Sore throat. Nausea. Fatigue. Body aches. Friday I threw up. I decided to go back to urgent care and try again. This time when they took my vitals, my blood pressure was an alarming 86/62, and my pulse was high but nothing new there. I was negative for strep. They said I needed to go to ambulatory care if they could squeeze me in otherwise I would have to go to the ER. Luckily ambulatory care had a cancellation so they could see me.

They took my vitals and tested me for every kind of flu, Covid, RSV and everything came back negative. They did a lung X-ray thinking pneumonia but it also came back clear. I had had a little pain in my lower abdomen (which will make sense later) so they did a CT scan of my abdomen which also came back clear. My BP kept going from low normal to abnormally low, my pulse stayed high. I had no fever Friday. But felt truly horrible with chills, deep body aches, fatigue, neck swollen and swallowing felt like knives.

The doctor comes back in, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you. You look like death. There’s clearly something wrong but I don’t know what.” The first of my many blood tests started coming back. My white blood cell count was high. Definitely an infection somewhere. My c-reactive protein (CRP) (words I didn’t know before now), which is apparently supposed to be between 0-5 was 193. Inflammation station. The doctor decided to do another strep test in case the first one didn’t go back far enough. Then they did a CT scan of my throat. The CT tech seeing me again says, “Oh bless your heart, you’re back. We were just talking about how grey your skin was.” During the CT when they give you contrast they tell you it will feel warm all over your body and you will feel like you’re peeing yourself. All true. But this time when I was transferred from the CT scan to the wheelchair, it still felt like something was coming out…down there. They took me into the bathroom where I found out that my on and off period choose THIS moment to reappear. How does it always know the worst possible time? But that explains the abdominal pain.

They tested me for mono, did a comprehensive upper respiratory panel for all kinds of upper respiratory infections. I’d been there for about 7 hours getting bag after bag of IV hydration, while my lips became so dry, white, and crusted over that I couldn’t fully open my mouth. I was also slowly loosing my voice and developing a cough. My vitals continued to be all over the place.

I overheard a doctor outside my room say the word “sepsis” and that my doc should “take this seriously and act quickly” which she truly was. Finally she came in and said, “There’s definitely an infection but we just can’t find the source. At this point you are septic and need to be admitted. The good news is we caught it early and there’s no vital organ damage yet.”

Once we got settled into my room, the literal first question they asked me was if I have an advanced directive and if I wanted to set one up. I don’t remember much… I met a lot of people. They took more and more blood, gave more and more iv fluids, and different kinds of antibiotics. I turned the tv on and tried to just focus on that. There was a strange comfort of watching old sitcoms with commercial breaks and tv static… like the good old day of being a kid home sick from school.

Somehow, morning came. At some point that day they told me they found the source of the infection in my tonsils. There would be more rounds of IV antibiotics still and so many more blood draws. Sore. Bruised. I wanted out. I wanted to sleep good. I wanted them to stop poking me.

Eventually, I fell asleep hard. Then was woken up—over and over for more stabbing. My IV site started bleeding down my arm. I woke at 1am dry heaving for several minutes struggling to catch my breath. They injected something for nausea and I slept again.

The next day, the doctor came in and said that she wanted to keep me there on IV antibiotics another day but that if I felt better and wanted to leave and if my white blood cell count had improved, she would consider releasing me with oral antibiotics, and follow up appointments and blood work during the week. I said I wanted to leave so quickly. And then we crossed our fingers and held our breath for the blood work.

In the meantime, if I didn’t move at all, I felt ok, but even doing the smallest movements hurt so badly like I’d been working out for 82 hours straight. Turns out when you are sick and fighting a deadly illness, doing absolutely nothing is exhausting enough.

Then the good news came. White blood cell count back in normal range and I was allowed to leave. What I didn’t realize was how incredibly winded and fatigued and in pain I would feel. (Sepsis and Bacterial Infections)