Lisa G

On January 29 I went to the ER thinking I had a kidney stone. No stone showed up in the CT scan. The urine sample I gave showed blood so the doctor thought I may have had a stone and passed it. They sent me home.

On February 20, 2012 my urine smelled funny and I had a minor ache in my lower back. It crossed my mind that I might have a UTI but I felt better later in the day and never thought about it again. (Sepsis and Urinary Tract Infections)

February 24, 2012 I was at work and felt the twinge of a bladder infection. I went to see the nurse at the medical center of my work. She did a dipstick test on my urine and told me it was full of nasty stuff. She took my temperature and checked blood pressure. I didn’t have a fever but my heart rate was 126 bpm. She told me I should go to the ER. Since there was no one to cover my shift I decided to stay until the end of the day. That afternoon even though I wasn’t cold, my body went into uncontrollable shakes. The nurse popped in my office at 5:00 PM to check on me and told me I looked flushed. She once again old me I should leave and go to the ER but my shift was almost over so I stayed.

On the hour-long drive home I started to feel better. I thought I’d wait and see how I felt in the morning. By the time I got home my back had started to ache again. I told my husband I was going to the ER but he didn’t need to come with me, I’d be back in a few hours.

By the time I got to the hospital at 9:00 PM my heart rate was 151 and my temperature was 39.6. The nurse took me right into an exam room. Shortly after they did blood work and a urine sample. In about 20 minutes there were 5 nurses in the room, hooking me up to an IV and taking more blood.

The doctor came in and told me the infection in my kidney had spread to my blood. I was admitted and given morphine for the pain. My husband came in to see me the next day. He never told me at the time but he thought I looked like I was close to death. I was. The doctor told us if I had a few more hours to go to the ER I would have been in ICU with organ failure or had I waited until morning I probably would have died in the night from septic shock.

The first few days are foggy because of the pain medication. I know I had an E. coli infection that started in my bladder, moved to my kidneys and then to my blood. I had an ultrasound done on both kidneys and my bladder. The doctor told me my right kidney was swollen, surrounded by fluid and is filled with a bunch of pus filled pockets. The pain was unbearable. I was one sick lady. On day 4 I had an ultrasound on my liver, it was swollen and leaking fluid. On day 7 they did an ultrasound on my gall bladder and decided it needed to be removed as it was swollen and full of sludge. I was quite upset over this as I did not want surgery. On day 8 the surgeon came in and told me he decided not to remove my gall bladder since prior to the sepsis infection I never had any trouble and he wanted to wait and see if the swelling was caused by the sepsis. I had blood work done twice a day, by the time I got out most of my veins had collapsed and I joked that I looked like a junkie. I had to have my IV restarted 15 times. Ouch.

After 9 days in the hospital I was home – tired, sore, and 10 pounds lighter. I was back to work in just a few days. Three months later my blood work showed I am not completely recovered, I still have a high white blood cell count and a low red cell count

Here is the thing that makes me angry. I received a call from my family doctor’s receptionist on day 5 of my hospitalization saying they have the results of the blood work I had done on January 29 and the doctor wanted to talk to me about the results. Seriously? It takes almost a month to get blood work results back. When I was at the ER on January 29 the only thing they could tell me was I had blood in my urine and there “might be an infection brewing”. Maybe if I had gotten the results back sooner I wouldn’t have gotten sepsis.

This is the second time I survived sepsis both times from a kidney infection gone bad. The first time I had sepsis was in 2002. This was my third kidney infection. I know if my urine gets “that smell” again I will go to the ER right away as I recognize the smell of a UTI.