Jim Green
This June 20, 2018 will mark my 11th year as a septic shock survivor. I had a UTI (Sepsis and Urinary Tract Infections) on 6/16/07 that the doctor prescribed to low of an antibiotic. On Saturday, 6/18/07, I called the doctor on my cell phone (cell phones had a lot of dropped calls in those days) to say I wasn’t feeling any better. In the middle of the call, it dropped out, and numerous times I tried to recall the doctor were unsuccessful. He was a covering doctor; my main urologist was in Europe that weekend.
On Monday 6/20/07, during the wee hours of the morning I was feeling worse, sluggish, and feverish. I went to the bathroom to urinate, when my entire body went into a convulsive state, and suddenly was ejected into the bathtub laying in a fetal position. I stayed there for several hours, and when I woke up, crawled upstairs to my bedroom to go to sleep. I mentioned to my wife my entire body went into a convulsive state, she said, “go to bed you feel better in the morning.” From that point, I don’t remember anything except waking up in the hospital some days later.
My grandson was the first credit I have for saving my life. He was 4 at the time, and when I didn’t get up to go work, came up in the bedroom to see why I hadn’t got up yet. My wife was already at work. My grandson saw I was in convulsive state, doing silly things with my hands and proceeded to call my son who was sleeping at the time and was 23 years of age. My son called my primary care physician, who was located in NYC. The doctor told him to get me to the nearest hospital on Long Island Nassau University Medical Center. My son called 911 and I was rushed by ambulance to the hospital. My family and a priest were called in to administer last rites because the admitting doctor didn’t think I was going to make it. They ripped my clothes off and the doctors were fighting to save my life.
Several hours later when I was stabilized, the attending ER doctor (who was consumed with saving my life) told my wife, “if his blood pressure drops any lower, he is a goner, just sit with your family and pray.” And that they did. Within hours my pressure started to rise, and I was then admitted to the hospital to recover. My sepsis didn’t come without residual effects. (Sepsis and Post Sepsis Syndrome) When I got discharged from the hospital, I had a squeezing pain on my two right fingers like a plier was squeezing them. I had an unneeded fusion on my neck. After getting 3 opinions, the last doctor said it was spinal stenosis and assured me it was a text book operation. It wasn’t because I was left with the same pain on these two fingers and caused me to have a second surgery in a different cervical area some 2 years later. I also suffered from severe pain in my left hamstring and foot. After seeing about 30 doctors in NYC, I finally was diagnosed with idiopathic neuropathy. No medicine has ever alleviated the pain. I exercise to combat the pain, and although it has been a tough battle moving on, there is not a day that goes that I thank God I’m alive.
