Riley Schoneman

Survivor

Hi, I’m Riley and currently 26 years old. I was on a weekend getaway golf trip with my friends in Palm Springs when on September 1st 2019, I woke up feeling out of sync. Though I felt not the best, we played a round of golf early in the morning and I just passed the idea that I was tired from the heat and early round. As I began to feel worse, I thankfully decided to head back home to Los Angeles in the afternoon. By the time I got home I was tired and starting to feel the chills and hot like a fever. I took the following 3 days off from work to recover from what I thought to be a bad cold.

This is when things took a turn. On September, 5 my girlfriend Nicole came home to find me with a 105 fever so she immediately took me to the urgent care just down the street where they instructed us to head to the ER about half an hour away. At this point I was laboring to breathe and felt delirious and asked the doctors at the urgent care what they could do to help me now instead of going to the ER. Big mistake on my part! They treated me with IV and the fever went down to 99 and I thought all was behind me so we left and went home after 2 hours at urgent care. The next morning I woke up and felt like I was dying inside so my girlfriend rushed me to the ER at 5 am. The doctors performed x-rays on my chest and found I had a severe case of pneumonia and sent me home about 6 hours later with only a zpack. (Sepsis and Pneumonia)

At this point I thought I was in the clear but things dramatically got worse in the following hours. I couldn’t sleep and my temperature skyrocketed back to 105. Now I could barely move, I had trouble breathing and could barely form words to ask for help. I felt like my body was giving up and my mind was closely following suit. My girlfriend contacted my parents and had me taken to the hospital in Orange County close to my parents. I was immediately received by triage as we entered and taken to the emergency room where the ER doctor explained that I was septic. They told myself and my parents that if we had waited any longer that I would most likely not have any chance at survival. A CAT scan was performed next to check for damage to my internal organs since I had developed a large hernia from the coughing caused by the pneumonia. Luckily no damage was apparent and the hernia was not blocking my intestines.

My temperature was not responding to any medication and the medical staff explained to my family that the following 48 hours were critical to my survival. My lactic acid levels were high and causing pain throughout my body and the temperature was causing convulsions. I was admitted to the pulmonary wing with an internal medicine doctor responsible for monitory my sepsis indicators. For the first two days I really had lost hope and did not know what my outcome would be. Thankfully after plenty of treatment via IV antibiotics my indicator levels plateaued and I began to recover.

I stayed in the hospital for an additional two days and was released to my parents house on bed rest for 12 days continuing the same treatment at home via antibiotics and fluids. Though I was frightened to leave the hospital because I still felt so ill, I couldn’t wait to get home. I felt sick for the next 2 weeks without being able to walk more than a few minutes or hold a meaningful conversation. Though this just happened I am beginning to feel more like myself now. All in all I was sick for about a month but I am seeing myself recover. The doctors said a huge factor is my age and really benefited me in recovering without lasting damage. However, I do feel scared to ever get sick or incur sepsis again and I have trouble with my short term memory and sleeping still. I feel very lucky and humbled to have experienced this sickness and to have walked away from it as a survivor.

Send us Your Story
Learn More about SepsisSupport Faces of Sepsis