Janice Kern

I had been seeing a kidney specialist for 12 years for CRF [chronic renal failure]. I went in for my usual three month exam and told him I had urinated blood a few days prior and it terrified me. He just kind of brushed it off and ordered a urine culture. I never got a call about that urine culture or what it showed.

Two weeks later, on a Saturday afternoon, I thought I had food poisoning, I was so very sick. On Sunday, my son called 911, I was talking out of my head. I was rushed to the hospital and transferred to another hospital, put in ICU on a respirator, in an induced coma, on constant dialysis with a drain coming from my right kidney. I was in septic shock.

After 11 days in the hospital, I was sent home with home health care. Now, five months later, my ankle still will not allow me to walk, I’m in a wheelchair due to necrosis. My hair is still coming out by the handfuls. I’ve had surgery on my right kidney to remove numerous ‘infectious stones’ so that they could remove the drain that had been in for four months. No urologist wanted to touch it. I had to go to a urology surgeon. (Sepsis and Kidney Stones) He still has to do the left kidney which he says is worse than the right one. I am absolutely terrified of getting the flu or any type of future infection! That’s where I’m at right now and the basis of my story. I’m alive and I’m grateful for life but, how much we take for granted being able to walk, or use my left hand, fully. The after-effects of this disease are horrid.