Lu Lirette

My name is Luc Lirette. On June 21, 2015, while on vacation in London, Ontario, I began the fight of my life. I had not been feeling well since my lap band was removed seven weeks prior due erosion through the wall of the stomach. After seeing Shania Twain in concert and doing some shopping, I woke up on the morning of June 21 and was complaining of chest pains, nausea and was sweating profusely. My wife rushed me to London Health Sciences Centre’s Victoria Hospital. Initially, the ER doctors suspected I was having a heart attack. After my wife, Shirley, provided them my health history, they immediately diagnosed sepsis.

Once I was stabilized, they where able to determine the source of my infection via CT scan. Shortly after being moved from the ER to the CCTC unit, I went into septic shock, followed by cardiac arrest. which took 10 minutes to revive me. I also suffered from acute kidney failure, fell into a coma and crashed a second time when my blood pressure dropped to 11/10. At one point I had 16 individual pumps delivering medications to keep me alive.

Doctors had initially given me a 10 percent chance of surviving. I was placed on Prisma dialysis for two and half weeks, the duration of my coma, then on regular dialysis before being transferred to North Bay Regional Health Centre on July 21, 2015.

Doctors pumped approximately sixty-two litres of fluid into me, I had multiple CT scans, echo cardiograms, was briefly on full life support followed by assisted breathing with help of a tracheotomy. They also thought that I would have possibly needed to have my right leg amputated as my thigh and toes were turning black. I had to learn to walk again.

After many months of rehabilitation, physiotherapy, determination and support, I am back at work full-time.