Dawn Bowman
On Thursday March 10th, 2016 I went to a routine doctor’s appointment to have my thyroid checked. I mentioned to the doctor that I hadn’t been feeling that great and had a sore throat and a stuffy nose. She told me that it was “probably just my sinuses, and to come back next week if I felt worse.”
On Saturday I felt even worse and stayed hot the entire day. I slept most of the day Sunday and don’t remember much. Monday March 14th, (my birthday) I felt horrible, but still went into work. That’s the last day that I remember. I went into work on Tuesday and Wednesday. The only thing that I remember from Wednesday is that I had a very hard time breathing, and had started to see things that weren’t there. I tried to get an appointment with my doctor on Thursday but they couldn’t work me in so they made an appointment for first thing Friday morning. When I woke up Friday, I felt so bad that I couldn’t drive my kids to school and had to have my husband cancel the appointment. I didn’t get out of the bed the rest of the day.
My husband works second shift and had checked in with my kids throughout the evening, but around 7pm he sent my daughter a message asking if she had eaten anything. She told him no but she was getting ready to make some macaroni and cheese in the oven, and he knew then something was wrong. (She was 9 at the time) He knew that this was something that I would never allow her to do. When he got to our house, I was unconscious and had a brownish/greenish mucus coming out of my mouth. He called 911 and luckily we are less than 5 minutes away from the EMT station.
They had to intubate me in my driveway, because I had gone into full respiratory failure. If he had come 30 minutes later, I wouldn’t be typing this story today. I’ve known the Fire Chief for years, and he rode with me in the ambulance because he was afraid I was going to die before getting to the hospital (that’s 10 minutes from my house) and he didn’t want me to die alone. They were packing me in ice on the way, and my husband said he was driving 85 mph behind the ambulance and couldn’t keep up. When they checked me into the hospital I had a fever of 104.9, and they had no idea what was wrong with me.
It took them 2 days to figure out what all was wrong with me, and on Sunday night they called my mother and husband back to tell them they needed to call my family and friends to come and say their final good-byes because I was not going to live.
They diagnosed me with a sinus infection, Double lower lobe pneumonia (was told this was the worst kind to have), sepsis (in my blood and bones), DIC (bleeding out – eyes, ears, etc). (Sepsis and Pneumonia, Sepsis and DIC) My liver went into shock, my kidneys had completely shut down, and I was not breathing on my own at all. My blood pressure was 70/40 when they checked me in and my blood sugar was 35. I spent 2 weeks on a ventilator, sedated and another week and a half learning how to do simple things like washing my hands and brushing my teeth again.
I had never heard of sepsis before this, and the aftermath has been terrible. I now have damaged kidneys, damaged lungs, PTSD, PSS, severe insomnia and my body feels completely foreign to me, even after almost a year. (Sepsis and Post-Sepsis Syndrome, Sepsis and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) And the thing that bothers me the most, is that NO ONE believes that anything should still be wrong with me. I had to change doctors because she wanted to blame everything on my thyroid, and never took me seriously. I am so glad that I found this site and other people who understand what it’s like. I just wish that doctors would take patients more serious and stop trying to just give a “magic” pill for everything.
