Rosie S.

Five weeks ago, on a normal Monday afternoon, our family’s life changed forever when I received a phone call telling me that my beautiful, vibrant twenty-five year old daughter Rosie had been admitted to hospital in Derby with sepsis. My eldest daughter was at work in London and my son was in hospital in Liverpool recovering from major surgery and we all went into panic mode!

Rosie is a wife and Mummy to two children aged five and one. She and her husband run a country pub in a Derbyshire village and as you can imagine their lives are very busy and she is always on the go! For the two weeks previously she had been staying with me and had spent every day visiting her brother in hospital. She began to feel unwell on Tuesday, complaining of a sore throat and chest and by the time she travelled back home on the Thursday we thought she probably had a chest infection. On reflection, how I wish now that I’d insisted she go to the walk-in centre that day for antibiotics but she was missing her little ones and was anxious to get home. The following morning her little boy was unwell so they both went to their local GP who, after examining Rosie, said she was ok and didn’t have a chest infection. Over the weekend, however, she felt progressively worse but, with two children and a pub to look after, she did what all mothers do and ‘got on with it’! On that Monday her husband persuaded her to go to the doctor again and an emergency appointment was made for that evening. This is, however, when things took a turn for the worse as within just half an hour, she was very sick, confused and struggling to breathe. An ambulance was called, the paramedics said sepsis and Rosie’s journey to hell began.

Sepsis…..I’ve heard of it, we had all heard of it but, like many other people, my knowledge of it was vague to say the least and it was always something that could happen to someone else and not my daughter. Everyone thought Rosie had a virus, would feel like crap for a few days and would soon be back to her normal self. No, the devastating reality was that by time that ambulance arrived, Rosie was fighting for her life.

Wonderful friends took over here, one arriving at my house saying “come on, let’s go”. Another, rushing to the hospital in Liverpool to collect my son and take him to Derby. My other daughter had arrived at the hospital and with Rosie’s husband by her side, they were taken into a side room and told “I’m sorry but it’s very likely Rosie may die tonight”. Those words will haunt her forever, as they will me after I heard them too.

When we arrived in the ICU, we were taken to see Rosie. The ward was quiet and in a strange way quite peaceful, despite there being so much activity around her and machines that were beeping and flashing. She had so many tubes and lines going into her little body and all I was able to do was hold her fingers which I remember felt so cold. That night our family and Marc’s family took it in turns to sit with her and just will all our love and strength to her to keep fighting and she did and she got through that night and the next day. On the Tuesday evening, the consultant told us that she was the sickest person in the hospital, everything that they could do for Rosie had been done and it was now down to her to fight back.

Again she did just that…..our miracle girl did not give up and ten days after being admitted she was given a tracheostomy and was slowly weaned off the sedation. That week in someways was more traumatic for us sitting by her bed than it was when she was sedated, paralysed and ventilated as she was very distressed, couldn’t make herself understood and small seizures meant she had to have an MRI scan which showed some damage that they thought could affect her movement but with rehabilitation would improve. Three weeks following her admission, Rosie was in a chair, breathing for herself and the nurses took her to see the sunshine outside! We were told at this point that she may face up to six months in hospital with two years full recovery time and this seemed very hard to take on board when we were still struggling with just how sick she had been. A further week on and she is now tracheostomy free, sitting up in bed, talking and eating and drinking small amounts. Six months in hospital….I doubt it!!

The initial blood tests showed Rosie had flu A which had caused a chest infection and double pneumonia. (Sepsis and Influenza, Sepsis and Pneumonia) It was then found she was suffering from PVL, a relatively minor skin infection that lies dormant in most of us but can be serious and for Rosie had developed into life-threatening sepsis! We are incredibly lucky that Rosie will make a full recovery although as yet we are all unsure how long the road will be but she has us by her side all the way. I am so grateful to the paramedics, the doctors and the nurses at the Royal Derby Hospital as the unwavering care and treatment she has received has been second to none. Ironically, sepsis is in the news on an almost daily basis at the moment and I’m so glad that this is the case as I have read so many tragic stories where, had the signs been spotted earlier, then families would still have their loved ones with them. This is a silent killer and we are blessed that Rosie was heard and has come back to us. There were night’s on my own that I wept to think that Thea and Flynn may never see their Mummy again, Marc could have been widowed after just seven months and our family could have lost such a precious part of us. Now I know Rosie was never going to go anywhere…..she’s fought back against one of the worst infections a body could have and she’s winning! Rosie fought sepsis as hard as she could and she beat it…….not everyone is that lucky!

Source: Jo (Rosie's mother)