Count your blessings
Sepsis is is a serious condition that can quite easily look like your average gastroenteritis , the flu or even a chest infection. Sepsis is the body’s response to an infection.Sepsis develops when the chemicals the immune system releases into the blood stream in order to fight an infection cause inflammation throughout the entire body instead meaning your body attacks it’s own organs and tissues. If it’s not treated immediately, it can lead to multiple organ failure and even death.
Instead of spending my summer celebrating finishing my first year as a student nurse, I ended up in intensive care fighting for my life – I had contracted sepsis from a mild infection in my gallbladder, which is usually quite mild and easy to treat.I had been on placement the very same day, when I began feeling unwell. By lunchtime I had begun violently throwing up with an onset of severe abdominal pain – by the time I had managed to get home & called 111 for advise I had turned grey, clammy and had become extremely breathless.
Doctors believe I had intra abdominal sepsis, due to acute Acute cholecystitis (inflammation of the gallbladder) as a result I had a dangerously low blood pressure and my kidneys had begun to fail. If it wasn’t for the NHS & the incredible care I received I may not have survived.
I will be forever grateful for the incredible care I received during my admission to hospital. From the A&E department (although I can’t recall all of what happened there) – I know the A&E registrar took one look at me and took me straight into resus herself. I know that the senior sister working in resus that day, made me and my family feel safe despite there being a dozen bodies surrounding me trying to gain IV access.
I remember the A&E consultant remained calm throughout my time in the emergency department. He had immediately begun to treat me for sepsis, remaining calm and composed even when my body wasn’t responding to the bags of IV fluid being pushed into me, he ensured I had arterial access and a central line inserted into the veins in my neck. I was treated with broad spectrum antibiotics and required adrenaline and a number of other inotropes to try and improve my extremely low blood pressure. When I was stable, a consultant and specialist outreach nurse from Intensive Care accompanied me to CT.
After a full body CT scan I was taken to the intensive care unit where I required maximum inotropic support (medication used to stabilise low blood pressure). Blood tests indicated I was incredibly acidotic with a dangerously high lactate and required hemofiltration (renal replacement therapy). I was told that I needed to be intubated immediately. (Put to sleep and a breathing tube put in my mouth in order for the ventilator to take over my breathing for me). I was heavily sedated for four days.
When I finally woke on the Friday afternoon, I was well enough to be extubated (the breathing tube removed). I remained in intensive care for another two nights, my family and the staff were telling me how unwell I was and how happy they were to see me awake. Although the breathing tube had been removed, overnight I required additional respiratory support. Known as Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP).
I didn’t get any rest the first night I was extubated. The Intensive Care Unit was incredibly noisy and I was suffering with delirium, seeing people and things that weren’t there. I was frightened and desperately wanted to go home. Sadly, I was struggling to cooperate with the mask that was tightly strapped to my face over my nose and mouth – Throughout the night I was given a lot of encouragement and reassurance about the importance of persevering with the CPAP.
This is where I began to understand just how much the tone of someone’s voice and the look on their face can have an impact on you as a patient. That night I was treated with so much kindness and understanding that eventually I forgot about the mask that was strapped to my face forcing oxygen into my lungs, that sort of felt like my head was outside of a car window that was going 90mph. I was reassured that although the things I could see and hear were not there, I wasn’t made to feel silly – I was made to feel safe.
That morning, when the physiotherapists (The unsung hero’s of the NHS) came to review me, I was determined that I would be able to go for a walk and hopefully be allowed home. It turns out, after being sedated and confined to my hospital bed for five days that it was going to take some time for me to recover. Even with their help I couldn’t even manage to stand, I lay in bed that afternoon sobbing. I look back on this memory now; two weeks after being discharged from hospital and I feel so grateful that I am able to wash and dress myself each day. That I’ve managed to go on a number of beautiful dog walks with my boyfriend and our Frenchie. Being so acutely unwell has really put so much into perspective for me.
I was finally stepped down to the Surgical Acute Dependency Unit, where I spent a further five days being monitored closely and remained on IV antibiotics. It wasn’t until I was stepped down out of the Intensive Care Unit, that it hit home just how unwell I had been. My partner and his mum, told me that I had spent those four days on the ventilator fighting for my life, they genuinely thought I might not survive.
I continued to be followed up each day by an intensive care outreach nurse, who is incredibly passionate about the after care of those who leave the ICU. She saw me at my most vulnerable, she listened and talked to me not only about being in ICU, but about what was worrying me or scaring me the most she reassured me that most of how I was feeling was normal after what I had been through. I will be followed up in clinic in a couple of months to ensure I am still coping okay. I am also being followed up by the surgeons to discuss the removal of my gallbladder which after further tests revealed gallstones.
She also gave me some information leaflets about being in intensive care and about having sepsis. I found the information in The UK Sepsis Trust – a charity which not only supports those who have had or been affected by sepsis but also campaign to raise awareness about the illness. The statistics in this leaflet startled me, I had no idea that in the UK, 100,000 people suffer from severe sepsis each year. I also learnt that the mortality (death) rate for those with severe sepsis is around 40-60%, again hitting home just how lucky I am to have survived it.
As a future nurse and as a 24-year-old that has been affected by the illness, I am determined to start raising awareness about sepsis. Sepsis doesn’t discriminate, although the young, the very old and those with weakened immune systems are more vulnerable – anyone can be affected. I was told that if I had taken myself to bed that day, I probably would have died. Sepsis can move from a mild illness, to a severe one very quickly that’s why it’s so important for everyone to stop and think – “could this be sepsis?!”.