Sue Oram

I had just turned 40 and was happy and healthy. I got an insect bite on my arm. Nothing more. It was itchy and red like a mosquito bite but may have been a tick bite as I spend a lot of time outdoors. A week passed and the bite developed a yellow head and a big red welt round it. I saw the doctor and got oral antibiotics and an appointment to go back in 4 days.

By the 4th day a huge abscess had developed. I was still going into work and a director at my office said to me about my arm, “that’s nothing, just take an antihistamine.” When he said that I felt maybe I was being silly about leaving work to go to the doctor again but my Mum, who was staying with me, said “you MUST go” and by this time I was running a temperature with the chills, like flu. (Sepsis and Bacterial Infections)

I went to the doctor and she said “we can’t deal with this anymore you need to go straight to A&E”. I did and was admitted to hospital immediately. Within an hour I was put on intravenous antibiotics every 4hrs and over the next week had two operations under general anesthetic to clean out the abscess. I was in hospital for 10 days and signed off work for a month off to recover. It was tough, the antibiotics made me feel grim, and I know I could have had a much worse outcome if I hadn’t gone back to the doctor. I feel lucky and grateful my Mum nagged me to go!

My takeaways from my experience are positive I feel like I dodged a bullet health-wise, also to listen to your body and not the advice of others: I knew I wasn’t well and I just kept pushing myself for work. Also to look out for those signs infection is growing: take photos, draw permanent ink pen lines round red areas, take note of feeling sick or flu-like. And after sepsis, don’t diminish your experience, going back to work make sure to speak to Occupational Health and get moderated hours to begin with. I found going back to my job almost overwhelming and I was very teary, very unlike me. I was asked constantly if I’d been on holiday for the last 6 weeks and that was weirdly upsetting as such a huge health scare had happened. Or people had heard I was off work because of an insect bite and thought I was pulling a fast one to get time off work.

I was very lucky and it reminded me life is unpredictable, not to take things for granted, you never know what’s going to happen so try to be positive and enjoy each day!