Linda King

Linda King was a beloved wife, grandmother, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, and my mother. She passed away on January 12, 2015 at the young age of 64.

The official cause of her death was sepsis and pneumonia. In just two-and-half short months, the most exuberant person I knew went from overall good health, to an agonizing and most certainly painful death.

For the majority of her life, my mom was a very healthy person. In high school, she played sports and ran track. After graduation, she worked hard to became an integral part in her father’s company, and later decided to venture out and start her own business, growing her love and passion of antiques and collectibles into a successful small business.

She was a trailblazer, self taught in most every area of her life from hand-painting intricately detailed ceramics to hand-coding her own website. She was a giver and a helper, shouldering responsibility whether or not it was hers to take on. Mom had a love of knowledge and was constantly finding ways to challenge herself.

To underscore the above, my mother was a completely healthy, productive person who was exceptional in every way. As healthy and full of life as she was, no one could have foreseen that her death would be the final outcome of her intestinal health problems which began to develop in the spring of 2014.

A few years earlier, during a routine colonoscopy, doctors had identified some diverticula (small pouches in the intestine that can get infected and cause diverticulitis). Even though mom had completely changed her diet by removing all seeds, nuts and anything that might get stuck in the pouches and cause infection, by June of 2014 the diverticula had became infected, causing a full-blown case of diverticulitis. The infection grew out of control quickly, and her body created a fistula that drained the infection. (Sepsis and Perforated Bowel)

Having a complete hysterectomy in the late 1970s, this was quite alarming and my mom immediately visited her primary care physician. Her doctor was not concerned, prescribed her some antibiotics and told her to go to an OB/GYN for follow up. Interestingly, years earlier, her doctor had told her to stop seeing her OB/GYN as there was “no need” since she had undergone the hysterectomy.

Upon visiting with her OB/GYN, he was gravely concerned about her fistula and said that out of all of the cases of diverticulitis that he had seen, this was a 10 on a severity scale of 1-10. He told her that she needed to get to an intestinal surgeon right away.

Mom’s first visit to colon/rectal surgeon was in June of 2014. He was the only surgeon with an opening within several months, and it was urgent that Linda be seen. Her infection was so bad that he advised her to continue on the antibiotic regimen until the infection cleared up enough that he felt it safe to perform the surgery to remove the infected colon.

It took 4 months of antibiotic treatment and 1 week long stay in the hospital for an electrolyte imbalance before the infection cleared up enough for surgery to be performed.

Her surgery took place of October 16, 2014. The doctor removed the piece of infected colon and fused the good colon back together. Mom was concerned that there was a small chance that she would be left with a colostomy bag but the doctor assured her that he would do everything he could do avoid that.

After surgery, the doctor reported that everything went smoothly and that the surgery was a success. The infected colon was removed, no colostomy bag was needed, and while it would take a few weeks for the fistula to heal, all was well.

Three weeks after surgery, Linda was still having significant drainage and called the doctor to follow up. He told her to call her primary care doctor and left it at that. Mom visited her PCP who gave her some more antibiotics, and was supposed to run some blood tests. Those results never did come back.

Friday, November 21, 2014, I visited my mother in the evening. She had been having an in-home nurse stay with her during the day while my father was at work, and the nurse had told my dad that my mom was having a hard time with mobility and getting around the house.

That evening my mother rested in bed, and would periodically cry out in pain. I tried to talk to her, but she seemed confused and didn’t want to talk. I chalked it up to it being late in the evening, and her possibly being low on electrolytes. I took her blood pressure and it was 90/60. I then took mine just to make sure that the machine was working and it was 110/80. I joked with her that we were reversed, because she always had high blood pressure (even took medication for it) and that I always had low blood pressure.

A couple of times she hallucinated that someone was behind me, but no one else was in the room except for my father, who was in front of me at her other side. He joked that the pain pills must have been pretty good because she had been doing that since he had gotten home. While I didn’t know it at the time, I now know that these were the beginning signs of sepsis.

Saturday, November 22, 2014, I called my dad in the evening to check on my mom. He said that she hadn’t moved all day – she hadn’t eaten, gone to the bathroom or anything. He said that she said she just wanted to rest. I knew that was not normal and told him if she didn’t improve the next day, that he needed to get her to the doctor. I called my grandmother and updated her and she was going to go visit the later in the day.

Sunday, November 23, 2014, after no noticeable improvement, my father decided to call 911 and get my mom to the emergency room. Remarkably in Kansas, if you can pass 3 tests to show you are of sound mind, you can’t be taken against your will – you must know the day, the year and your name.

With my mother answering those questions correctly and then saying that she didn’t want to go to the E.R., the EMS allowed her to stay home. Even though she had all of the hallmark symptoms of sepsis: fever, difficulty breathing, low blood pressure, fast heart rate, and mental confusion, they allowed her to stay home. My grandmother visited again later in the day to check on mom. She helped my dad clean up what they thought was an “accident” in the bed, which really turned out to be just more drainage from the fusion that didn’t “take”.

Monday, November 24, 2014, 10:00am – my mom called my dad at work and cried out that she couldn’t feel her legs. She was scared and confused. He rushed home and called 911. EMS took her to the hospital. Once checked in and blood levels drawn, her Creatinine level was 6.3, normal is below 1. The doctor who operated showed up and told my grandmother, father and me that my mom was super sick. He just kept repeating “she’s sick, just sick, sick, sick”. He said that she was septic and needed surgery right away or she would most certainly die.

He gave us two options: operate right then to remove the infected colon and put in a colostomy bag, or give her antibiotics and he said she’d die in two days. But even with surgery he says that she only has a 10% chance of recovering. We were in complete shock. We had so many questions: Why is this happening? Didn’t the infected colon already get removed? How is she still draining infection? WHAT IS SEPSIS?

Then the truth… The doctor admits that only 2% to 8% of colon fusions actually “take” – the rest require additional surgery and a colostomy bag. Basically, her fusion never fused and she had been slowly growing more and more septic in bed for the last month.

We opted for the only viable option to try and save her life – surgery, set to begin at 5pm but the doctor was late and she didn’t get taken back until 5:30pm. We learned later that the surgery didn’t actually begin until 6:12pm. At 7:51pm he comes back to talk to us and says that her surgery went well. He said that she’ll recover in ICU and we can see her in 30 minutes to an hour. He says that she’ll need to stay on the ventilator at least 24 hours.

Tuesday, November, 25, 2014, was mom’s 64th birthday and she was completely unaware and heavily sedated with propofol and fentanyl and was still on the ventilator. Her kidneys had all but stopped working. The next month and a half were a blur of one step forward and two steps back. Each time they would try to remove her ventilator, she could only stand to breathe on her own for a few hours before they had to re-intubate. The doctors finally got to a point that they went ahead and put in a tracheotomy to try and mitigate any future infections.

As often as her urine output would increase – giving us hope for revived kidneys – her skin would balloon up and weep with excess fluid and then the urine output would slow again. It was agonizing for us to helplessly watch her decline, but I can’t even imagine the pain and suffering that she was enduring, trying so hard to fight and pull through.

Christmas came and went, with mom not even aware. We all visited her every day – my dad was there from sun up to sun down – even staying the night on most weekends or days that he didn’t have to work. There were only a handful of occasions where mom was responsive and would look at you – seeming to recognize you. Of course she could never speak to tell us how she was doing because of the tracheotomy, but many days we were hopeful that should would pull through all of it.

By late December, mom developed pneumonia. The doctors tried to drain her lungs but the infection was spreading. By January 11, her white blood count was at 24. The normal range is 3.5-10.5.

January 11, 2015, mom had been on a steady decline for the last week or so. The doctors said she was in full renal failure. Mom’s blood pressure dropped to an alarming 70/40, which caused the staff to chemically induce life saving measures. They called in our immediate family to make the decision about whether or not to resuscitate her if needed. Because her body was so weak from all of the fighting she had been doing for the last several months, we choose to let her be if that was to be the outcome and to ease her suffering as much as possible.

January 12, 2015, Mom had been on dialysis all night with no progress. Her face was unrecognizably swollen along with her arms and legs, all weeping from the massive fluid retention. Almost all of her organs had shut down. For seven full weeks she fought with everything she had. Her body just didn’t have any more fight left. We made the impossibly difficult decision to make her comfortable and shortly later she passed away peacefully at 9:25am.

I know my entire family struggles every day with “what ifs” – had we only known the signs of sepsis, this would have had a very different outcome. Every chance we get we will tell her story, educate people on the signs of Sepsis, and we’ll never forget how truly amazing she was and how blessed we all were to be a part of her life.

Source: Jennifer (Linda's daughter)