Darnell Iachino

After returning from a week in Disney World, I felt I had a urinary tract infection (UTI), which I seem to get a couple times a year. (Sepsis and Urinary Tract Infections) Not wanting to miss anymore work since I had just been out a week for vacation, I went to the emergency room and was diagnosed with a UTI and was given an antibiotic. Rather than getting better I continued to feel worse.

The next day, my heart felt like it was racing out of my chest so I had my daughter bring me to the emergency room for the second time. My heart rate was 198 and I was given a drug to bring it back into rhythm.

My blood pressure was low also and they were going to admit me, but decided to release me. The next day I continued to run fever and just kept getting weaker. My daughter called a cardiologist, who told me to go back to the emergency room. I almost refused and if wasn’t for my daughter I would be dead today. I was admitted into intensive care where my blood pressure had dropped to 72/41. I had no idea how sick I really was and no one told me of the long term effects I could have from having experienced Sepsis.

My husband, who is in the picture with me, died last year of leukemia. (Sepsis and Cancer) I always worried that with his illness that he would die of sepsis since sepsis and pneumonia were the two main complications that leukemia patients would have to fight. He had plasma cell leukemia, which was more aggressive and even after a stem cell transplant, which was so hard to go through, the disease continue to grow.

I seem to be doing okay now. I really didn’t know how serious it all was until I was turned down for life insurance (told I had to wait six months) and then my neighbor called to tell me about a woman who just died from sepsis and she had started out like me with a UTI. She was about 10 years older than me and I really didn’t know her. Sure made me realize how lucky I was. Just to think, if my daughter wouldn’t have insisted on me going BACK to the emergency room I wouldn’t be alive today, and I would be joining my husband in Heaven.