Ramona Russell
The day after Thanksgiving I left my mother’s home about 2:00 pm. After I got home around 4:30 I sent my mom a text telling her I was home. She texted me “okay”. The next morning she was found face down, naked, and unresponsive. She was flown to a brain and spine hospital due to neurological and cognitive impairment. Background on my mom: 74 years old, widowed by sepsis, lives alone, gardens, only takes Tylenol arthritis, still works full time 12-hour shifts as a respiratory therapist.
We arrived 10 minutes after my mom landed. She was completely incoherent, trying to get out of bed, and in severe pain. Numerous tests were ran and no results. No temp, blood work good. With 4 of us trying to hold her down, 6mg of morphine and fentanyl, unable to get lumbar puncture. She was moved to a neuro ICU. She would fight and try to get up and speaking incoherently. She would do this for 1 minute and 25 seconds. She would then go completely out for 10.5 seconds and then back to fighting. She cycled like this for 3 days.
The admitting doctor on day one, while we were trying to give her my mom’s history, said she was well aware of her history and the past 48 hours. The doctor stated because of her mental state they would do a MRI and CT in 2 days. I asked her why wait for 2 days. The doctor replied “It’s Thanksgiving weekend and we are not going to call in an anesthesiologist, everyone gets days off. That’s how it is in this country”.
At this time I discussed it with family and we told that doctor she was fired and not allowed to step foot in our mom’s room. We got the patient advocate and chief of staff. All tests were still coming back negative but she had a fever now of 102 and 23,000 WBC count, and elevated lactic acid. They had to put her on a ventilator because she was struggling to breathe and it was only way to get her completely out to rest and get her nutrition as well because no pain medicine would put her out.
They loaded her up on several antibiotics but said due to her age and condition she had about a 10-15 percent chance of making it. I didn’t sleep and looked and researched. I remembered being told that my mom had taken trash out of her trash can at home and tried putting it down the garbage disposal. She also had put two of her parrots in the same cage that she would normally never do. I still could not figure out why none of the pain medication was working either. Then the lightbulb went off. Sepsis can alter your mental status and you show no other symptoms. It can also stop the analgesic effect of benzodiazepines. So the doctors started trying antipsychotic medications (Seroquel) and it worked.
SEPSIS can be a frog in a pot condition. It can slowly wear you down. . Symptoms can be so vague that many patients may not even go to a doctor. Then it’s too late. Thankfully because my mom had advocates for her (children are law enforcement, registered nurses, respiratory therapists etc.) we had to explain to the nurses and doctors that treated her that what they were seeing was not her normal state and 75% of the time they just assumed she was mentally out of it.
Two months later she finally made it home and is doing great. Progress every day and is hoping to go back to work in a couple of months. I’ve had SEPSIS twice, it killed my father, and almost my mom. Don’t ever hold back when it comes to being an advocate and educating people about the disease.
Source: Ryan Russell, son
