Guadalupe Rojas

This is the story of my mother who just passed away 27 days ago. I’m still in total devastation and shock myself. My mother was 85 years old.

Around 2 years and 6 months ago, my mother was considered an extremely active person for her age. She did 23 years of aerobics, was very active in church and had joyful personality. About 1 year and 6 months ago she fell and hurt her back. Then 6 months later she had to have a surgery for an umbilical hernia and she was blocked from the waist down. This caused damaged in her sciatic nerve and numbness in her leg stopping her from walking.

During the last year, she almost lost her legs’ mobility. She complained sometimes of constipation, but the only thing she was prescribed was fiber to increase the bowel movement. On August 18th, she was rushed into the hospital after she had been throwing up for a whole day and she was becoming really weak. Doctors said she had an intestinal obstruction and tried to clean her intestines but there was no movement whatsoever.

After 24 hours observation, the doctors decided to do surgery on my mother. Her intestines were not functioning anymore and they had to remove 40 cms of her intestines. They told us this part was already gangrened or necrotic and she was also very weak as she had had a strong reaction to the plasma. Five hours later she was recovering in her room.

The following day, my mother seemed good considering the surgical intervention she had just been through. But the next day, despite her effort to walk to try to initiate the bowel movement, she started to complain of having a huge back pain. That night she had fever and you could see she was having trouble breathing. The doctors ordered some nebulizers to help her breathing as they thought it could be pneumonia. The next day my mother slept all day, still complaining about the horrible pain she was feeling all over her back. She was in total distress, not herself at all. Her breathing became harder and harder, until she was ordered a permanent oxygen mask.

Since the second day after surgery, I knew something was not right. My mother continued developing a fever, but by Thursday her whole physical aspect was completely deteriorated. I noticed her lower tummy was distended but doctors never paid attention to me. That night, a different shift came in and a doctor started ordering a lot of tests (analyses). He told us that my mom was in a very critical condition and he was going to request to move her to the ICU area. But no one ever mentioned what she had or what could happen.

Friday she was moved to the ICU area and a doctor told me that she had a very aggressive infection in her lungs and kidneys and that if she would survive this she could have a lot of complications. Pretty much they were preparing us for her death but they never mentioned what went wrong or why this was happening.

When I saw my mother, her body and face were completely swollen, she was not talking anymore, not sure if she was still recognizing me, but her pressure was really low and her heart beat was really fast. By Saturday morning, she had been connected to a respirator. She was not awake anymore, and her inflammation continued.

Saturday night was the last time I saw my mother alive. God took her in his Glory on Sunday, August 26th at 3:00 AM. Her suffering had finally ended. Her diagnosis was Septic Shock and Abdominal Sepsis. When I read this, I did not even have a clue this existed, and how fast this bacteria can take the life of your loved ones. I also did not know how this bacteria enters your body and the negligence that could cause this.

I still live after her death with so many unanswered questions, sometimes wondering if I could have done something different if I would have known more about Sepsis, if I would have been able to identify some of the sympthms earlier that could have saved her life. If only the people in charge would have paid more attention to the early signs, if they would have only listened, maybe she would still be alive!!!

Source: by Letty Cureno (Guadalupe's daughter)