Vincent P.

Early on in the spring of 2018, a neighbor of my parents told me about a friend who died within 5 days of contracting sepsis. I thought – wow “what is sepsis” and “what a quick death for an otherwise healthy person”. Little did I know, i would become more than familiar with Sepsis in the months to follow.

My robust and active 89-year-old father fell on the morning of June 14 2018 and broke his hip picking up a trash can that was blown over by the wind in the middle of the night. Luckily, I was visiting my parents that evening and heard my dad screaming outside. I took dad to the ER that morning and little did I know, he would never come home again.

Dad had femur repair surgery and after 5 days was sent to rehabilitation. He worked hard everyday to walk again and hated being away from his family and his home. He was always very active in his garden (he is from Italy). After 6 gruelling weeks in rehab, I arrived one day (July 18 2018 – Wednesday) and dad was in distress. He was pointing to his stomach and so I called the nurse and we put him to bed with Tylenol. I suspected it was his urinary catheter (UTI) and pleaded with them to take it out…..it took them 12 hours to do so. The following morning he had a fever and they treated with Tylenol. They also took blood work. When the blood work came back they said UTI and started him on oral antibiotics and infection disease doctor noted “no concern for MRSA”. (Sepsis and Urinary Tract Infections) By Sunday (Jul 22,2018), he was declining and I called the nurse practitioner and told her that I wanted to take him to ER. She persuaded me not to (ie little did i know these places get ratings based on how many hospital transfers they get). She started him on IV antibiotics “just in case” it was a more serious infection. On Tuesday (July 24 2018), the infection disease doctor said “your dad should do very well on antibiotics”.

By Thursday (July 26,2018), I called the nurse practitioner again since dad looked awful. She said “he can go either way” – I was shocked! I’m like – well then why do I have to bring this to your attention! I still had to fight to get them to release him to ER and I managed to get him in an ambulance and out of there – after 9 days of being ill!

In the ER, dad was diagnosed with severe sepsis/MRSA/ endocarditis and a stage 3 bedsore…not to mention the hip that was operated on.  (Sepsis and MRSA) They were telling me he was “touch and go”. I was in disbelief. How did we go from working so hard in rehab and almost coming home to close to death? He spent 5 days in ICU and wasn’t eating much. They wanted to transfer him back to rehab for 8 weeks of IV antibiotics with a PICC line, urinary catheter, feeding tube and special pillows to move him every 2 hours for bedsore.

I contacted the geriatric doctor and she bought me more time in the hospital (5 more days) – I feared rehab would be the end of him as they are all short staffed, etc. During this time, dad continued to decline and didn’t eat or drink (I opted against a feeding tube knowing how dad would hate it). By Friday August 3,2018, they all were telling me “nothing more to be done”, “he won’t make it out of hospital alive”, “he would need a miracle”, etc, etc.

He was in lots of distress both physically and psychologically – it was unbearable to watch. So by Monday August 6,2018, I felt no option but to choose hospice care. Dad’s room was converted into hospice IPU. His antibiotics were stopped, vitals were stopped and morphine was started to .3mg every hour. He was still rousable but mouthing words to me that I couldn’t make out – to this day I wonder what was he trying to tell me? On the 2nd day his morphine went up to .5 mg per hour and he wasn’t rousable anymore. On the 3rd day, it was upped to 1 mg per hour, along with .5 mg ativan every 4 hours and haldol 1mg 2x per day. He was completely overmedicated but it was too late to say anything. On the afternoon of the 3rd day(Aug 9), I sat in his room and held his hand and cried and told him how sorry I was that this all happened and how I wish I could have made better choices with rehabs, etc. His eyes were open but he could no longer see. I was hoping he could still hear me. His room was private but window faced a brick wall (typical NYC) but at that time in the afternoon, some sunlight came in and at the very moment that we were holding hands, the room was filled with a warm blinding light. U kept thinking – this is the warmest brightest light ever!

His doctor told me she would text me when she felt he was close to death. So, I left and shortly afterwards, he died BUT I think he died and went to heaven while i was there holding his hand. No one prepares you for the death of a parent especially not when you have to make life and death decisions on their behalf. I am forever changed by the word SEPSIS and will always wonder if I needed to do more – theses decisions (ie hospice) will always haunt me!

Source: Michael (Son)