Gayla Templeton

I survived my bout with sepsis but barely. I had knee replacement surgery in 2008, first on my right knee and then three months later, on my left. I came through in great shape. They told me while in the post surgery therapy that I was their poster child. Pretty funny considering I was 65 at the time.

I was several months past any concern for my knees in Feb. of 2009 when I had stomach flu that was going around. I had been ill for three days and then took a turn for the worse. I had stopped vomiting but it came back with a vengeance and lasted into the night. I got up about 4 a.m. and decided I’d feel better if I took a shower. All I really remember is that I was falling out of the shower onto the bathroom floor. I really think that I passed out but I’m not sure. I was able to get myself untangled from the shower curtain and into my bedroom where I sat naked until morning. I don’t know why I didn’t lay down but I just sat there for several hours.

My oldest son Jim is a nurse and was working the evening shift, which often kept him at the hospital charting until the small hours of the morning and as a rule, he slept in until late morning or even until noon. The morning of my illness, for some reason he woke up about 9 am to see how I was feeling as he knew I had been sick with the flu but not that I had gotten worse. (Sepsis and Influenza) When he called I told him I was awfully sick and that I had fallen in the bathroom. He asked me if I was hurt and I told him that I didn’t have any pain but that I must have hurt my back because I had no control over my fingers and that one by one, they were trying to curl up. I would straighten one and then another one would curl up. This sent off a warning to him and he remembered in his training that when someone is near death their hands curl into a ball involuntarily. To me it seemed funny for some reason to watch them do that and not be able to stop it. His home was about 20 minutes away and he says that he dressed and got to my house in 10.

He used his key to get in and he started to look me over and noticed my left knee was bright red and hot half way down my leg. He told me I had to get dressed so he could take me to the hospital and I found I couldn’t do it. Although he is a nurse, he’s still my son and I do remember being embarrassed that he had to put my panties on but I was too weak to do it myself. When he got me to the hospital, they told him that if he had waited an hour he would have found a body instead of his mother. I think he already knew that. I don’t remember anything except them telling me I was staying. They called in the surgeon who did my knee replacements and he came in to talk to me and told me that he would be taking out the infected artificial joint the next morning. I told him that I didn’t want to do that, I just wanted to wait for the antibiotic to clear up the infection. He told me that there was no antibiotic that could do that and that I was going to die without the surgery. That was the end of that conversation and I had the surgery the next morning.

They took the infected joint out and put in a antibiotic spacer. It was just something to keep medication in the area while they pumped more into my arm. They were having so much trouble getting a needle into my veins that they put a port into my right upper arm. It was painful but I actually don’t remember much other than that.

After 10 days, they began to prepare me to go home. Physical therapists began to work with me so that I could get around with a walker since I was not able to put any weight at all on the spacer. It was not anything that could bear weight at all and I was not to do anything on that side other than a toe touch or I could wreck the whole thing. They helped my children get me in the car to go home but once they got me home the trouble began. I was so exhausted by just getting there that there was no way I could support myself with the walker. My arms were just too weak.

Once they got me into the house, they put me in a chair and decided I would have to sleep on the sofa, knowing that there was no way to get me into the bedroom. My daughter had come from Nebraska to take care of me since she also has nursing training and she could see that there was no way she was going to be able to get me up and down to go to the bathroom. She is a tiny 100 pound woman and there was just no way she could support me as I am taller and heavier despite a weight loss while in the hospital. After a quick family conference, they decided I needed to be cared for in the six weeks until my next surgery in a place where they would be able to manage me until I was stronger.

They talked to the doctor’s office and a staff member there told them that there was a floor in the hospital that I should have been referred to that was operated by a company not actually affiliated with the hospital and they would be perfect to care for me and to get me back on my feet. I was taken by ambulance back there and it was such a relief to know that they would get me strong again. I was so afraid of falling and tearing open that knee. I just don’t think anyone had realized just how weakened I was from first the flu and then the sepsis. I have always been a very upbeat and optimistic person and they had a false impression that I was in much better shape than I really was. I hadn’t really even eaten a real meal when they tried to send me home. The rehabilitation floor gave me physical therapy first in bed and then taught me to get from the bed to the chair. They had beds that weighed me every evening and the dietitian worked with me so that I regained my appetite and got stronger. By the time I was to have my next surgery I could get in and out of bed, maneuver the wheel chair into the shower and take care of my own bathroom needs. I still can’t believe it took me that long but it took most of the six weeks until they were able to transfer me back down to the surgical floor and operate to remove the spacer and put in a new knee.

I was able to take part in my own physical therapy that time and to leave the hospital after a week. However, I was once again weakened enough that I needed to go into a nursing facility for a couple of weeks to regain my strength. It was a lovely place with great therapists and by the time I was released, I was walking the halls several times a day at a pretty fast clip. After I went home, my daughter stayed with me for a few days and went home when she was sure I could care for myself and my pets. However, I continued to go in on an out-patient basis to get antibiotics for several weeks. I had been in the hospital for a total of 89 days and the cost had been over sixty thousand dollars for everything.

I can walk pretty well only using a cane when I am going over rough terrain or walking for an extended time. I still have pain in that knee but control it with medication. That leg is shaped differently but I don’t care a bit about that. I have so much to be grateful for especially that my son found me in time. I enjoy my life and my family so much knowing I could have missed all this. I became a great grandmother for the first time since the sepsis and that is just one of many special moments I almost missed. I would like to tell anyone reading this that artificial joints and replacement valves such as those in the heart are magnets for deadly infections. When the immunity is down an infection that may not be much to another person can be a death sentence for anyone with anything artificial in their bodies.

I believe my immunity was down from the flu and the sepsis took off from there. I do a lot of volunteer work with animal rescue and I had just taken in two puppies to foster that were rescued from a dirty filthy puppy mill breeder and that may have been where the infection came from although I’ll never know for sure. During my treatment I met others who had had a similar experience. We all agreed that although we had been through a rough time, we were the lucky ones.