Shannon Decker
A cold January morning, January 22nd 2019, started out like any other day. I kissed my mom goodbye and went to work for the day. What happened next set me and my family on a path for what I call hell on earth. My mom called me complaining of stomach pains and diarrhea. She was also coughing a lot more than she normally did. She also had congestive heart failure. I immediately rushed home to find my mom white as a ghost and just sick looking. I rushed her to the hospital and waited for hours hoping to find what was wrong.
After spending one night in the hospital we were told her cough and diarrhea were viral and to go home she had nothing to worry about. (Sepsis and Viral Infections) I, however, felt something was still wrong. After all, I work at a bank and am not a doctor so I really didn’t know. Fast forward to Super bowl weekend and my mom has been sick in bed for days, looking like she had the flu. I was really worried about her. The final straw was on February 7th after countless doctors and urgent care visits in one week. Nobody could find what was wrong. I am just about to leave work when I get a text from my dad. The text went like this: “Get home NOW! we have to take your mom to the ER!”
I raced home on two wheels only to find my mom crying confused and ghostly white on the living room floor. My dad and I rushed her to Sherman Hospital where within 5 minutes she was brought for blood tests, and hooked up to many monitors. 10 minutes have now gone by when the nurse comes running in “She has confirmed sepsis”. Sepsis?!?! I thought? What is that, my dad and I wondered. The critical care nurses ran down the hall and raced us up to the ICU. Boy were we in shock. My mom was only mildly coherent at this point. She had a small pimple like bump on her stomach that wasn’t opened that doctors believe became infected with E-coli and caused her sepsis. (Sepsis and Bacterial Infections)
The following day I got what would be the last phone call or conversation I’d ever have with my mom. She wanted to make sure I was at work and she told me she loved me. Before I could finish my shift, my dad texts me saying she has organ failure and not only that but she has ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome ), a disease which fluid leaks into the lungs making breathing difficult. (Sepsis and ARDS) Therefore, she had to be put on a ventilator. Through it all, she gave sepsis all she had and put up one heck of a fight like the fighter she was. She fought hard for 17 days, unconscious on a ventilator.
On February 24th 2019, it was the day that my whole world came crashing down. Two days after the anniversary of my grandma’s passing from cancer, my world was rocked in more ways than I could imagine. I had arrived at the hospital and was sitting in the waiting room with my dad because I was told they were cleaning and changing my mom. Suddenly my mom’s nurse came out to the waiting room. Oh no! This can’t be good I thought. It wasn’t. The nurse told us that they were turning on the last of the only four vasopressors that exists that could raise her blood pressure. If this didn’t work she was going to die. We kept praying she would make it through and someday wake up and that we would go home. She had just survived an a fib episode a few days earlier. Despite cranking up a litany of drugs to raise her blood pressure and fight the infection, it wasn’t enough her blood pressure kept dropping. She had gone from just sepsis to severe septic shock. At midnight, with my family at her bedside, my mom’s blood pressure plummeted. I remember the horror of watching the monitor helplessly as her vitals disappeared. All we could do was cry and support each other even her nurse Charles wanted so badly for her to live. He cried with us like part of the family. At 12:31 my precious mother took her last breath and her heart stopped as my heart broke. Just like that my mom was gone!
As I look back on the horror and tragedy my family faced with my mom’s sudden death, I want the world to know what a kind loving mother I had who helped anyone she could. She will be forever missed!
I love you mom forever and always!
Anthony
Source: Anthony Decker, her son
