Carleigh R.

I was a college senior in Miami. I was studying for the LSAT to get into law school. I didn’t expect this to happen. No one does. In October of 2017, I noticed I had severe acid reflux. It wasn’t that abnormal to me since I suffered from GI issues. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t swallow. It felt like my chest was on fire. Two weeks later this “bruise” appeared inside of my thigh. It was black and it grew down my leg. I went to urgent care and they shuffled me away telling me to take Tylenol for the pain.

Two days later I was sitting in class and began shaking uncontrollably. I went home and sat in bed for the next nine hours screaming in bodily pain. The next day I went to the student health center where I was lucky to have a doctor that suspected something out of the ordinary. I felt okay the day after and really thought the medicine was working. The following morning I woke up without depth perception. I couldn’t pull up my pants after using the restroom. I lost my eyesight and my hearing. I fell to the ground as I had lost all feeling in my body. I remember laying there screaming in my head saying “this can’t be the end.” After regaining feeling I called my doctor who instructed me to go to the hospital. I don’t remember much about getting there. I just remember crying in the ER waiting room until someone helped me. My heart rate was 160, my blood pressure was 80/53, my blood was almost anoxic, and my potassium levels were almost at 0. I was in the hospital for a week and then I did two weeks of antibiotic infusion at an outpatient center. The sepsis was caused by aspiration pneumonia – which was caused by my acid reflux. The doctors told my parents I was hours away from death that day I brought myself to the ER. (Sepsis and Pneumonia)

I don’t know how, but I sat for my LSAT a month after. Today, I experience severe hair loss. I have nerve damage in my left leg. Most days I feel like someone took a baseball bat to my legs. I have nightmares almost every night that I am again septic but this time the medication won’t work. Some days I am so tired I don’t get out of bed. Other days I am so dizzy I need to hold onto someone when I walk. My brain doesn’t process things as easily anymore and I get insanely frustrated with myself for feeling so slow in thought. Every time I have some symptom of some small thing I panic and cry thinking it’s happening all over again.

At the end of the day, I know I am lucky. I know I was close to my death, but somewhere out there there was someone watching out for me. I know it wasn’t my time to die. I know now that this is my time to do what I was meant to come to this planet to do.