Larry S.

On October 30, 2018 I received a phone call that changed my life forever. I picked up my phone and the guy calling asked for Jessica (me), I told him that this was her and he said, “I was a part of your father’s care team when he passed.” My heart dropped to the floor and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The doctor began to explain what happened from the beginning…..

On Thursday, October 25, 2018 my father was at his storage unit; there was another guy there that happened to notice my father in his truck screaming in agony. When the guy left he noticed a police officer on the side of the road and told the police officer that he should go do a welfare check on my father as he seemed to be in excruciating pain. The officer immediately left and went to check on my father. From there the officer called for an ambulance, when the ambulance got there they had to physically help my dad out of the truck because of the amount of pain he was in he couldn’t get out himself.

They transferred him to the nearest hospital around 2:15pm. Upon arrival to the hospital my father was still coherent and responsive. The doctors took blood work and when his lactic acid came back 4x higher than normal, the doctor feared the worst and sent my father straight to CT to get a scan of his abdomen. They found he had ischemia of the colon. By the time my father got back from the CT his O2 stats started to plummet and they had to intubate him. They transferred him to another hospital for emergency surgery but by the time he got to the other hospital he was already in Glascow coma level 3 (which is the worst stage of coma someone can be in). They proceeded with the surgery and removed all of the gangrene tissues. However, at 4:26am on October 26, 2018 the rest of my father’s organs shut down on him, he was in full blown septic shock and he had passed away.

Within 14 hours of the sudden onset of the severe abdominal pain my father had went into septic shock and all of his organs shut down. Up until October 30, 2018, I didn’t know much about sepsis or how quickly it can kill someone and now I can’t seem to know enough about it. This horrible infection took the most amazing man I know, without cause or reason. I want to be apart of the awareness of sepsis and how serious it really is.

Source: Jessica R. - daughter