Lori Nelson

I am a nurse, an ICU nurse to be exact for the past 35 years and have participated in sepsis order set and policy design for most of those years. In the summer of 2022 I received a lung cancer diagnosis and have never smoked. I had the surgery and then I became septic. (Sepsis and Cancer, Sepsis and Surgery)

The day I went to the ER was the first time I had went out to eat in awhile, with in an hour of my return home I began to chill, have rigors and became mentally incoherent. Luckily, I had actually lectured regarding sepsis at the small community hospital for many years, they saved my life. I was in the hospital for 10 days; I developed delirium and when I finally went back to work in the virtual ICU that I work in I could only do 4 hours at a time. Luckily my daughters who are both in the medical field realized what was happening and advocated for my care. It’s very scary even if you understand the physiology of what sepsis is.