Lashunda Denise Brown

I just lost my dear sweet sister to severe septic shock. This has been the hardest thing to deal with. She went into the hospital for a hysterectomy because of fibrous tumors on her uterus. (Sepsis and Surgery) Well her doctor put a hole in her small intestine the size of a cigar in which we did not find out until two days later because her heart rate was up and her blood pressure was so low she was unconscious. (Sepsis and Perforated Bowel) She was then admitted to the ICU and then the general surgeon did an exploratory surgery where he found the issue.

She was sent back to the ICU in which we were informed that she would be sedated so her body would not fight against healing itself. I went to see her that evening only to find her eyes were wide open and she knew that we were there to see her. Then the next morning was when they told us her blood pressure was stable enough to sedate her. The last couple of days were awful from hearing her kidneys shutting down, her lungs shut down, dialysis, being on the vent, to putting another IV in her neck and a GI tube in her nose to pull off acid on her stomach, only thing was it looked like bowel. One more thing they had to to cut her in a totally different area where the hysterectomy cut was, which they could not close her up for nearly 5 days, and when they finally did, they claimed they were going to start to bring her off some off the sedation medications, only to find out she was not coming out of sedation.

We were on a roller coaster ride because May 6, 2016 my sister was being air lifted to a hospital that could help her better after my family and I asked to relocate her. I would come every night and research this monster we were facing, and I would come back and ask the ICU doctors all kinds of questions, only to find out they were giving us false hope. They had never seen a case like hers and when it all came down to the wire they dropped the ball. They sent us to the other hospital because they said her pupils were not constricting to the light and they finally order a CT scan after all the days of me asking for test, so they airlifted her to a great clinic, in which they tell us she suffered two mini strokes and she could be paralyzed on the right side, never relaying the message from the neurologist that from the hospital that was accepting the CT scan that she would be probably be wheelchair bound, trach, and a feeding tube for the rest of her life, the doctor never once told us that he was sending us away on false hope.

Our parents, her husband and daughter, who is graduating high school on May 27, 2016, and our baby sister all drove to the hospital, only to learn she had 3 strokes in which one was major, with 2 mini strokes. We waited to see the doctors because they were running test that the other hospital did not do. They sent no medical records. She was not on dialysis, only the vent and one bag of medication instead of the many she was on at the previous hospital.

The next day we waited for all the test results and my brother-in-law was starting to wonder why she was not coming around, since my sister was no longer on the medications to keep her sedated and paralyzed. At 3:15 p.m. they told us my sister was brain dead and that she had been that way before the first CT scan the hospital told us they took that Friday morning. The CT scan was taken that Thursday night, in which we learned my sister was dead 48 to 72 hours before the CT scan was ever taken.

It was hard calling our parents only to tell them she was no longer with us, a day before Mother’s day, my mom has to hear her first-born child is gone. I had to break the news to my baby sister as she and my sister’s oldest daughter were coming back from getting lunch. Her daughter was taken to the conference room with her dad and my husband were located. I was in the room where my sister lay lifeless and I was saying goodbye, but also telling her how this was not fair for her to leave us like this, how her daughter will never have her walk her to her kindergarten class on the first day or how she will not be there for her oldest daughter class day, graduation, her first day of college, her college, graduation, nothing. Her husband and she were about to celebrate their 19 year wedding anniversary on May 10.

We have endured so much but to know and see how much sister was loved and missed by so many people tells me she was an angel to many. We had young and old people at her services, patients from the doctor’s office she used to work in to her high school classmates that live far away. I pray that one day I can make s difference in someone’s life about this creeping killer because I know in the area I live in, many people are uneducated about it and not even the hospital staff were we talking to could give us information the way I learned from this website and other research. I’m going to do my best to spread a message to educate so people can learn what to look for when someone they know has problems with high heart rates, low blood pressure to not wait around it best to be safe. We never left the hospital but I learned some people are home when these signs and symptoms start. I want to learn how to educate the public on sepsis and make it something community wide, as well as nation wide know. I look forward to reading and even joining events on this matter. Thank you for all of your time.

Sincerely,

A heartbroken sister in Mississippi

Source: by Valinda Cade (Lashunda's sister)