Leslie Rosenthal Schaeffer

Leslie was extremely active and athletic. She played tennis, golf and swam, all on the same day, and almost everyday. In the evening we went out, dinner, music and more. Leslie was my girlfriend and significant other.

About 10 months ago, on a Friday, she complained to me, “I strained my neck from taking TVs to the city dump.” She didn’t wait for me to help her. Her neck was now stiff. She had this persistent on and off cough since I met her. Strangely her cough was now gone. The next day she complained of back pain. It was severe. She had pain in her shoulder on and off from tennis, so she thought she just strained and twisted her neck and back. The back pain was severe, worse than her shoulder. I suggested we go to the emergency room, but she said she would call her doctors. I said fine.

Her doctors were in Florida and NYC. We were 3 hours away from NYC on Long Island, so she couldn’t easily visit the doctor. The doctors prescribed muscle relaxant and pain killers. They didn’t help and I guess masked what was happening. She spent much of the time in bed, but was able to walk and even went out with me sometimes. I guess the pain killers permitted her to function. She had me running to drug store for the prescriptions. She didn’t appear to have a temperature. Leslie then scheduled an MRI. The earliest she could get one was the upcoming Friday, four days from the time she scheduled the test.

Five days after she first complained of a stiff neck, I returned home from lunch to find her on the floor resting her arms on the bed. She couldn’t get into the bed and she couldn’t control her bladder. I called 911. Leslie couldn’t walk nor use her hands. The ambulance took her to the hospital. The doctors repeatedly asked if she drank a lot or took drugs. We didn’t understand why. She didn’t drink a lot. She drank moderately, nor did she use drugs. After a CAT scan and MRI, the doctors told us Leslie had a abscess on her spine. Oddly, I was relieved. At least they knew what was wrong. Little did I know what was really wrong. There was no word of sepsis. She was admitted to the hospital. Later, the doctors told us they would need to transport Leslie to another hospital. They couldn’t help her there.

Leslie was operated on the next day, for 6 hours. It was at the hospital just after the operation when I first heard of sepsis. The doctor told me she had sepsis and was the sickest person in the hospital. That started 6 weeks of treatment on antibiotics, etc. During this time she couldn’t breath on her own and she couldn’t walk or use her hands. She was confined to bed. Never again did the doctors or intensive care nurses mention sepsis. At one point, Leslie asked the resident doctor why she was bloated. As the doctor left her room, he mumbled “I don’t want to scare her.”

Four weeks after her operation, during rounds, infectious disease doctors visited Leslie. It was then that Leslie and I were told it takes a full six weeks of treatment before they would know if the antibiotics were helping with the infection. One week later, five weeks after her operation, she suffered two strokes which damaged her brain. She died the next week, 6 weeks after the operation.

Source: by Paul Lubin (Leslie's boyfriend)