I am most thankful that my health is improving. About six years ago, a tsunami of events collided to wreck my health. I was overworked, working my full-time job as a school librarian and as many as six additional part-time jobs, not so much for the money but for the opportunities the provided. I was the sole person to take my mom and brother to their doctors' appointments and the one who looked after them during hospitalizations. I thought I was handling all this exceptionally well, but apparently, I was wearing myself down.
Beginning in the summer of 2015, the strain was showing. I was a nervous wreck most days, and physical effects started to appear. My mother was placed in a nursing home following a bout of sepsis, and she hated it. She would call me several times a day to complain about her situation. These calls even came when I was at the beach with my family. I pretty much had a little breakdown and a good cry. I all seemed so hopeless.
Soon my brother's health declined. He had a toe amputation that was healing very well, but he overcompensated when walking and broke two bones in the other foot. Being a diabetic, he did not feel any pain until sepsis set in.
Long story short, this was the start of a final decline for both of them, but for my brother, we did not recognize the symptoms. My body responded to all of this with my own minor illnesses, treated by courses of antibiotics about every six weeks. The day my mother died in November I went to the clinic and asked for enough prednisone and antibiotics to get me through the funeral. I was prescribed the steroids, Levaquin and cough syrup. My health improved for about two weeks, and then I was back in the clinic for a double dose of Levaquin.
I repeated this process from December through February. The antibiotics I had taken had not killed whatever bug I had.
On February 17, my brother died. I was devastated. All the strength I had was disappeared.
I muddled through the rest of February and most of March. One day in late March I came home from school and decided to take a nap before dinner. I woke up four hours later with a 104-degree fever. Sepsis. I remember laying in the hospital bed watching a bright red climb up my leg. I knew that all the antibiotics I had taken had rendered me immune to much of their benefits.
I was released from the hospital eight days later. I was homebound for about six weeks, weak and sleeping a good bit of the time. When I returned to work my friends Venus and Rhonda helped me. I could not lift a tote of books, and shelving took about all I had. I had joint and muscle pain and extreme fatigue. I lost some of my hair. I was a hot mess.
Compared to others who had sepsis, I had it easy. Still, it took me almost two years to get my strength back.
This brings me to my offering of thanks. My sepsis was caught early and possibly was not at the severe stage. It's been a long two years, but the phantom pain and exhaustion are gone. I feel like I can actually do some yard work and maybe take a walk on the trail.
The mortality rate for severe sepsis is 25 to 30 percent. Knowledge is the key to stopping it early. My goal is to make sure as many people as possible know the warning signs and speak up if a loved one has any symptoms. See the graphic to learn the signs and save someone's life.
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