Kathryn Edwards

My 7-month-old daughter passed from sepsis in November 2020. She began to get sick around the end of September without any reason as to why. All her blood work, urine cultures and kidney ultrasounds came back normal. We spent a week in our local PICU on various IV antibiotics and were sent home. The night we were discharged, she declined severely and I rushed her back to the ER and demanded we be sent somewhere else. We were sent to the Children’s hospital a few hours away where Kathryn spent the next 42 days having a port placed, round-the-clock antibiotics, a G-tube placed and eventually when she failed extubation [removing the “breathing tube], a tracheostomy.

We were sent to the floor from PICU to room in before discharge and she was doing well. She started to vomit the night before our discharge but no one, including myself, thought much of it. It was very common for her to have GI upset. She was very fussy all day and in obvious pain to me but we could not understand from where. By 10 pm that evening she had started to run and fever and within an hour it reached 107 and she was being bagged on the floor. We were rushed back to PICU where she spent the entire night being tested for everything all over again.

All bloodwork, urine, and stool came back normal. Her blood pressure would not rise despite a dopamine drip and epinephrine. By 6 that morning she went into cardiac arrest and after multiple attempts at CPR and life-saving measures, could not come back. They unhooked her machines and I was able to hold her as she left this world. We still do not know what caused my daughter’s sepsis and it haunts me every day.
I miss her every second and my life will never be the same.

Source: Rebecca Edwards/mother