Nicole Jenkins

Hi, my name is Nicole. I’m a 2x sepsis survivor. My story is unique and familiar with some of the other survivors. I live in Clearwater, FL and my mom is an RN at Mease Countryside. I’m not 100% sure if she knows the Flatleys, but I know she knows of them and their story.

One day I started to feel ill. I went home from work and basically just went to bed. The next morning is when things started happening. I got sick a few times and I felt extremely weak. By midmorning I had laid down. I had only laid down for about an hour when I needed to get up. I found myself not being able to move. It was like I weighed a ton. It took all I had to basically roll myself out of bed and upright. I managed to go out to the living room where my mom was and she suggested I call my doctor to be seen. They saw me in the evening.

When the nurse was checking my vitals she kept checking my blood pressure over and over again. She left and came back with the doctor. The doctor was confused because my blood pressure was super low but my heart rate was racing. I was also extremely dehydrated. The doctor sent me to the emergency room for fluids and said they would further exam me. When I arrived, they too were confused because of the difference of my heart rate vs my blood pressure. They immediately took me back and hooked me up to monitors and fluids. They drew blood and the waiting game began. Now of course, nurses and a doctor came in, but mind you I spent several hours in the ER. They told me that I was in septic shock.

I was so dehydrated that everything was kind of a blur for me. They could not figure out how I got sepsis or where it generated from. I had a routine chest exam done before I was admitted to the hospital. They put me on the cardiac floor due to my issues. I was finally in a room by 11pm and I was starting to dose off around 1 am when they said they needed to run an ultra sound on me. I had no idea why, but they wheeled me down to do so.

While doing the internal ultrasound, they found out that both my kidneys were enlarged, with my right kidney being larger than a softball. From there, they said that I got sepsis from a UTI. (Sepsis and Urinary Tract Infections) They moved me from the cardiac floor to an isolation room (which I was thrilled for having my privacy but scared not knowing why) because they didn’t know if I was contagious. One of the RNs I had even came in the room all gowned up, as if I had the plague. They administered various antibiotics, as well as many other medications to get me back in shape.

I spent a week and a half in the hospital. The following year I had similar symptoms and went straight to the ER. There they repeated the same steps and I was admitted. Shortly after I got in my room, an infectious disease doctor came in and was questioning things. My mom had just remembered that I was on my period and that as a matter of fact, I had just finished my period the last time I had sepsis. The infectious disease doctor ran some test and found out that I did have anot her UTI but also with the use of tampons it was depleting the good bacteria in my vaginal area causing a breeding ground for more infection. I had expressed that I use feminine products responsibly and that I don’t like the feel of being unclean in that area. He said that I could have been over using them causing this to happen.

I went back on antibiotics and other forms of medications. I spent another week and a half in the hospital before going home. Now because of all this is have issues with my iron and calcium levels as well as my vitamin D being at 8% (which a normal low should be 30-40%). The odd thing was that it took the second time having this for someone to figure out the hows and whys. Both times I was very lucky, but the first time I had it the doctors told me that if I had waited a few more hours, I would have been on my death bed. I can’t stress enough how uneducated people are to this.

I had no idea what sepsis was and if it wasn’t for knowing about what happened to Erin Flatley (from my mom speaking about it, as well as me making various items for the Erin Flatley charities when I worked at the B Hive) I wouldn’t have even known about the severity of this. I know some have had it worse with worse side effects but each of us is a isolated case with the same diagnosis illness…..SEPSIS