Lori Wilkinson

I am a 44-year-old woman who had sepsis April 2016. I participated in sepsis research at the University of Florida while in the hospital and after leaving for the entire year after surgery. I still have disabling pain in my legs, memory loss, loss of focus and concentration, anxiety, depression and PTSD. I have been trying to get someone to believe me about the post sepsis syndrome since I started going to the doctor where I live now and nobody wants to have anything to do with this.

I have such a bad time with mental and cognitive problems that I am embarrassed just to talk to people and try to explain myself without looking and feeling like an imbecile. I require a lot longer time to fill out any kind of paperwork, assessments for jobs, medical forms, etc., and I hate trying to understand information someone else is trying to get across to me because I can’t keep my focus without being distracted. I will be talking and get distracted for a second and I forget what I was talking about.

I feel every single pain I feel has to be something serious now and I don’t think anyone will help me find out the problem and I get paranoid that I have some sort of cancer or infection and I will get sepsis again. I used to sing and write music, having memorized 100s of songs for my shows and did all of my important business on my computer but now I feel like I won’t ever get to sing again. I used to listen to music when I had a working computer but now even that is gone. I am hoping to find someone to believe what I say, that is all I want.