Karen Boaz

I had junk food for lunch. I often did. Later that night, I started with a stomach ache, then followed diarrhea, then vomiting. I very rarely vomit, even as a child I rarely did. I thought I had food poisoning.

The next day I was better, but still didn’t go to work. I still had stomach pains but my vomiting stopped. About 3 am I started vomiting again. I managed to get myself to the local emergency room, where they gave me an IV of fluid, pain medicine, and an anti-nausea medicine. My blood tests all came back normal and I was sent home with a prescription for the anti-nausea medicine and told to follow up with my primary physician if I got sick again. I was sick all that night.

Went to my primary who is about an hour away from my home and couldn’t get in, so I went to the ER at his facility. Again, anti-nausea meds, bag of fluid, and pain meds and normal blood tests. I was released and said if I got sick again to come back.

I was sick within four hours. I went to my local ER and finally the blood tests came back with elevated white blood cells. They did more testing and said I had sepsis. I had never heard of sepsis and I was in no shape at this point to Google it.

I have never had that kind of pain in my stomach before, and I have never vomited that much EVER!!

Three emergency room visits and two days in the hospital and I now know how very serious sepsis is.