Holly Showalter

I had laparoscopic surgery May 28th – an easy in-and-out procedure. Well, the next day, I didn’t feel good and I just thought it was from the surgery. But as the day went on, I got a fever. (Sepsis and Surgery) Even with Tylenol and pain medicine, it just kept getting worse. I knew i needed to go to the hospital because something wasn’t right. By then I was so weak, I was using a cane to walk.

At the hospital, I still had a fever and had blood work done. It showed an infection and my X-ray showed that I had a partly collapsed lung. They kept me overnight for observation and sent me home the next morning. As soon as I got home that day, I started vomiting. I laid in a chair all day. My breathing started to get bad and I couldn’t eat. I needed help getting out of the chair. That night I laid in bed shaking and crying in pain until I finally decided I needed to go to the hospital again. My best friend called the ambulance for me and when they got here I barely had a pulse, they couldn’t get a blood pressure. I needed to be on oxygen because I couldn’t breathe.

Once I was at the hospital, I was instantly intubated and rushed for emergency surgery because my stomach was filled with pus. I was on life support for three days and then put on a respirator for two weeks. I had to have my lungs pumped because when I was vomiting, I had aspirated in my lungs. While I was on the respirator, because of lack of oxygen, I developed gangrene in my feet and toes. When I was taken off the respirator the gangrene was just in my toes.

I stayed in the hospital another week to be on antibiotics because I still had a fever. Oh, I also have Lupus SLE. (Sepsis and Autoimmune Diseases) I then left the hospital and went to rehab for a week to build up my strength because I couldn’t walk on my own. I am home now but I still have some gangrene on some of my toes and am not sure what will come of that. I have anxiety attacks and get chills and have a lot of muscle and joint pain. I get through it everyday and am just thankful I made it. (Sepsis and Post-Sepsis Syndrome)