Teresa Hull

The first week of April 2017 marks my one-year anniversary of surviving sepsis. It feels strange that it has already been a year, because there isn’t a day that passes that it does not cross my mind.

In early March 2016, I had a dental implant removed, as the bone graft had caused an infection. It was supposed to be a routine surgery, with a quick recovery. I was sent home with a few days’ worth of antibiotics, which I finished. (Sepsis and Dental Health)

I still felt “off” the week following surgery, and ended up going back to my oral surgeon’s office to have the implant site rechecked. I was assured I just needed to rinse with a special mouthwash and was sent on my way. However, I still noticed pain in my jaw, and felt completely worn down and a bit feverish for the next couple weeks. I started coughing a lot and feeling all-over ill, and assumed I was just getting a case of bronchitis. The week before I was hospitalized, I had taken a pregnancy test and it came back with a faint positive, so I guessed that maybe hormones were playing a role in my fatigue (because we tested so early, my husband and I were keeping the news to ourselves). Between work, having a toddler, and knowing my husband would be deploying soon, life was very busy. I put the “off feeling” in the back of my mind, and continued plugging away, afraid that if I went back to the doctor, I’d be brushed off again. I’d convinced myself I was just being a wimp.

On the Friday before I was hospitalized, I remember feeling very strange (shaky, chilled, dizzy). I had attended the funeral of a dear coworker that day, a young woman not all that much older than me. I thought maybe my hormones and emotions were just getting the best of me. By Saturday, was running a fever of 104. I thought I’d just overdone it at work that week, so I brushed it off again. I told my husband I’d help him drive to the airport the next morning to pick up my mother-in-law…but then Sunday morning came and I felt like I couldn’t move, let alone drive safely. I stayed home while he made the two-hour drive to Seattle and back.

I don’t remember much of that Sunday afternoon. My husband, toddler, and mom-in-law were sitting at our house catching up, and I vaguely remember trying to be social. By mid-afternoon, I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore and excused myself to our bedroom to lay down. As the night progressed, my fever got higher, and I started to vomit. I passed out on the way to the bathroom, from what I realize now was probably due to very low blood pressure. I am not sure how long I was laying on our bedroom floor, pseudo-conscious, before my husband found me. I was drenched in sweat. He and my mother-in-law wanted to call 911, but I said I just needed help back to bed, and convinced them I’d go to urgent care in the morning. In my stubbornness, I passed out two more times that night while trying to make it to the bathroom alone to puke. By midnight, I was coughing up foamy blood and I knew it was getting very bad. I didn’t want to bother anyone, because my poor husband was still recovering from a tonsillectomy himself and not resting the best, so I tried to just hold on until morning.

At about 3 a.m., in my delirium, I thought it would be a good idea to send a text message to my husband, who was, in fact, sleeping in bed right next to me:

“I need to go to the ER right now. I think I am dying.”

I never got to hit “send” on the text message. My phone fell out of my hand and landed between us in bed as I passed back out, message still on the screen. When I woke up early Monday morning, April 4, 2016, I honestly felt like I was not going to make it. I couldn’t breathe. I was confused. I couldn’t even lift my toddler out of her crib to help dress her. I could barely stand. My husband and mother-in-law drove me to the ER– I had to have them stop the car en route so I could puke out the door.

When we got to the ER, I was surprised at how fast I was admitted. My blood pressure had dipped down to 56/38. When they took me back, they immediately started bloodwork and put me on intravenous fluid. I could tell something wasn’t right because of how quickly everyone was moving. I was expecting to wait at least a few hours before being seen and treated, as is par for the course (and understandable) when seeking treatment at an ER that is usually overwhelmed. Within about 15 minutes, there were paramedics waiting with a stretcher to take me to the larger, better equipped Navy hospital about 45 minutes away. The next thing I knew, there were five doctors in my room with my bloodwork results. I was told I had severe sepsis, and the paramedics were instead taking me to a local civilian hospital that was about 15 minutes away. When they were explaining to my husband why they’d switched which hospital I was being taken to, I heard them say, “Because she won’t be able to last the drive to the other hospital.”

I was transported by ambulance to the larger hospital. I was admitted to the ICU, and put on vasopressors. I had 12 bags of saline in the first several hours. I had so many tubes coming out of my body, and so many bags of fluid draped around me. To say I was scared doesn’t seem to sum it up well. I was terrified. I was in respiratory failure. My white blood cell count was through the roof. My lactate level was at 5.17, which I guess is no good. I had no idea what most of the numbers that were being tossed around meant at that time, but I did know that I couldn’t get oxygen in my lungs and that my blood pressure just wasn’t going up like it should.

The first night in the ICU, I felt beyond alone. I cried quietly when the nurses weren’t around. I’d been put in isolation, as the staff wasn’t sure what was causing my sepsis. They had to wear full masks, gowns, gloves, etc. each time they entered my room, and had to strip out of their gear at the door each time they left (which made me feel awful for the poor night nurse, who I had to keep paging to clean up after me). I couldn’t move without something coming unplugged from either of my arms, but at the same time I had horrible diarrhea as a side effect of my illness. I was too embarrassed to use a bed pan repeatedly, so I opted to “try” a bedside commode. I don’t know why this weird detail sticks out so much in my head – maybe because I hate asking others for help, maybe because it seemed surreal to suddenly need this kind of assistance. It felt humiliating trying to shimmy out of bed alone without setting off alarms (although I realize I was lucky, in that I was even able to sit up enough to scoot off my bed). Looking back, I guess I can laugh at my desperate attempts to not make a huge mess of myself and to not dislodge my plethora of IVs, even if it felt far from funny at the time. I’m an oddball who doesn’t even feel comfortable with a waiter or waitress serving me dinner, so having to page someone every 15 minutes to wait on me hand, foot, and…well…rear…when I felt like I was dying felt traumatic, to say the least.

At one point during the first night, I slid out of bed to use the commode, and as I leaned against the bed I passed a fist-sized blood clot onto the floor. I started screaming for help in a state of panic, but I already knew exactly what had happened. I was gushing blood. Just like that, before we’d even had the chance to let the news settle in or to share it with family and friends, I was no longer pregnant. My body was failing me in every way I could possibly imagine. I wanted to give up. I found myself hoping I might just float away from my body because everything hurt too much. I felt delirious and drained, and like my lungs were on fire.

The next morning, a priest came to the ICU and gave me Last Rites. It hit me then how dire things were. I was 34, surely this couldn’t be the end.

I thought of my husband. I thought of our 2-year-old daughter. I thought, “This is NOT the end of me.” I slowly got better and was eventually moved to a step-down room, where I managed to get some broken sleep…a sharp contrast from the exhausting ICU, with the constant monitoring and noises. My entire body was swollen from all the fluids I’d been given; I left the hospital weighing about 14 pounds more than when I was admitted due to fluid retention. In a twist of cruel humor from the universe, I looked pregnant from the fluid built up in my abdomen My supervisor at work came to visit me and even asked me if I WAS, in fact, pregnant after seeing my belly…which made me want to sink into the floor a million times over after everything else that had just happened. She couldn’t have known why (I didn’t tell people about the miscarriage), and I didn’t blame her for the inquiry, but it stung like no other. I wasn’t ready to talk about it.

Even in the step-down room, I still had a very difficult time breathing, and had to have intermittent breathing treatments. I had multilobar pneumonia, affecting both lungs. (Sepsis and Pneumonia) To this day, I’m not certain that it wasn’t the infection in my jaw that had started the cascade of events in the first place, sending my immune system into overdrive.

After I was released from the hospital, I was off work for a month, recuperating. Even a year later, I still feel like all the energy has been drained from my body most days, and I get upset at myself because I feel like I forget things more easily now. My lungs have odd, sharp pains at times, and I feel like I stay sick longer than I used to when I do fall ill. And while I realize how very, very lucky I am that my family got me to the ER when they did, and that the amazing ER staff recognized the signs right away, and that I was not as unfortunate as some who lose limbs or life, I still struggle to cope with the reality of what happened and how bad things were.

I was diagnosed with PTSD and anxiety following my hospitalization. (Sepsis and PTSD) I have reoccurring nightmares about being in the ICU; I wake up in cold sweats frequently, panicked about where I am. I struggle to trust my body to do the right thing when fighting infections, and every fever or cough makes me wonder, “Is this going to domino into something much worse again?” In the months following sepsis, there were times I felt so anxious, I couldn’t leave my house for days. I couldn’t eat or sleep, and I isolated myself from those who cared about me. I was angry at myself for feeling so anxious, and for not being able to cope – after all, I was incredibly lucky to not die and so many people have had it so much worse. I was mad at myself for not being able to just “let it go.” Thankfully, I’ve found a great psychologist who is helping me deal with this part of the aftermath. It hasn’t been an easy road, but I’m happy about my progress.

I refuse to be embarrassed about sharing this story (even all the unsavory bits) if it can help someone else who might be feeling the same way, or going through similar things, know that they are not alone. Everything feels different on the other side of this sepsis – I’m not sure how else to explain it. I’ve learned the hard way that you cannot help take care of everyone else if you don’t take care of yourself. I’ve learned that sepsis does not always discriminate based on age, or prior health. I’ve learned that you should trust your gut and ask for second opinions if something concerning your health doesn’t feel right. I’ve learned that my stubbornness can be a big downfall. And I’ve learned that I should not diminish my feelings about how completely terrifying the experience was just because it could have been worse. While sepsis has changed me, it will not define me. I am very thankful for this second chance at life.