Ray Fiorentino

On Feb 15, 2015, about 3 AM, I woke up to a stabbing pain, sweating profusely, hyperventilating and delusional. My wife Carla woke up from the noise of me falling to the floor. She managed to get me into the car and off to Urgent care, a short ride from my house. Within minutes they had told us that I was very sick and needed to go to a local hospital. They called EMT and off I went to Greenwich Hospital in CT. It seemed like the entire staff ganged up on me as my blood pressure was dropping quick and my fever was climbing higher by the minute. They couldn’t stabilize me. I heard someone shouting about a C-line and transferring me to another hospital, at some point I was told that if I didn’t get the C-line I would not have survived the trip to New Haven, Connecticut.

When I got to New Haven Hospital. they eventually stabilized me………for a while. At some time after, I was brought up to the ICU ward and soon was feasting on all kinds of I’s and plenty of meds. I was in there a few weeks before I went home. The culprit was an infected gall bladder which they did not remove and could not remove. If they attempted to do so it would cause “a shitstorm infection throughout my body”. So here I am with this infected gall bladder and a bile bag attached to my side.

Eventually I found a surgeon that claimed he could remove the gall bladder with no problem but had to undergo this feat soon due to urgent business in L.A. So in a couple of days he does the procedure and I’m ready to leave the hospital. But there was a problem. My body temperature was on the rise and the doctor had left the building. We couldn’t find the doctor. He took off for the coast. I felt duped and ready to die.

So we head back to Westchester to see one of my own doctors in his office. Dr. Francella took one look at me and arranged for me to be transported to Westchester Medical center.  When I arrived I was going into toxic shock. make a long story short, I was on LIFE SUPPORT TWICE. **In all earnest, I owe my life to Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla NY.** They knew what to do and how to do it. Whatever they did, it was planned carefully; it seemed very seamless. it made me just know that I was being taken care of.

I worked very hard during my post sepsis period; walking a little farther each day, reading as many books as I can, cognitive learning skills and much more. It seems as though I was gaining more traction with each day until Christmas of 2017.

This was my second fight with sepsis which thoroughly kicked my ass.