Angela Q.

In December 2022 I thought I had pulled a muscle in my left breast. 72 hours later it was obvious there was an infection I was swollen and severely red and I had a high fever. I kept blacking out from the pain on my living room couch. My mom called the ambulance service for me. I remember getting to the hospital and going in and out of consciousness. A doctor told me they needed to do exploratory surgery to see what was going on and needed my permission which I gave. 7 Days later I was woken from a medically induced coma.

During that time of the coma I experience what are called near death experiences. My experience was terrifying though. I will not go into the details of that, I’ve only shared that with my pastor and God. So when I woke I was very confused I didn’t remember the reason why I was there, didn’t know where I was and was completely out of it. Over the next few days everything started coming clear and people were filling me and what happened apparently I had two surgeries over a three-day period they had to open up from my left breast down to my hip and I have three incisions that I had to use a wound vac for for over 2 months.

For the first day I couldn’t even speak a full sentence, I had to learn to walk again and how to feed myself again. I have a three-year-old toddler at home with my mom. So I opted to do home health care for my rehabilitation instead of a rehab center. All the way up to now I am still receiving occupational therapy. I also suffered from congestive heart failure at the same time of the sepsis. A month later I was informed that I didn’t just have sepsis but I went into full blown septic shock and at one point they had nine different bags of medications antibiotics pressures and the doctors inform my family that they needed to get all my kids to come up there because they we’re not confident that I was going to make it out. (Sepsis and Septic Shock) But I did and I’m here, it was not my time.

I definitely know that I have post sepsis syndrome. My body and I mean my whole body has completely shedded its skin twice, I have a large amount of hair loss larger than the size of a quarter dollar. I’m pretty much all the other things that go wrong with it. I do have a new appreciation for life I never in a million years would have guessed that this would have happened to me and I would have almost truly died. I do know from my experience while in the coma that I was literally on death’s doorstep.

I believe one of the reasons I’m still here is for my 3-year-old and also for my brand new first grandchild that was born one week ago today. I have so much to live for but this experience has changed my life permanently.