We're All Insane - Septic Shock Survivor

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Britt shares her story of overcoming incredible odds after facing the life-threatening condition of septic shock. Sepsis shock is a life-threatening condition, and surviving it is a testament to strength, resilience, and the incredible support of medical professionals. Britt shares her experience, the critical moments that defined her survival, and the long road to recovery. This video sheds light on the dangers of sepsis, the importance of early detection, and the hope that exists even in the darkest of times. Links: https://www.sepsis.org (Sepsis Alliance) https://www.cdc.gov/sepsis/about/index.html (CDC - About Sepsis) https://www.nigms.nih.gov/education/fact-sheets/Pages/sepsis.aspx (National Institute of General Medical Sciences)  If you have a unique story you'd like to share on the podcast, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/ZiHgdoK4PLRAddiB9 or send an email to [e-mail] Business Inquiries please contact: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, it's me Devorah. I just dropped an all new bonus episode inside my new subscription channel, We're All Insane Plus. This week's bonus episode is called My Brain was slipping into my spine. Listen now by subscribing to We're All Insane Plus inside your Spotify or Apple Podcasts app or go to we're all insane.com. My name is Britt and I survived sepsis. I want to preface my story by saying that I'm not a medical professional. My story can be similar to other survivors, but it's not the same. And if anybody wants to learn more about sepsis, they need to go to sepsis.org, Sepsis Alliance.

The CDC website also has a lot of good information as well. So first, I want to kind of explain a little bit of what sepsis is. There's a big misconception about it. A lot of people think it's contagious. It's not contagious. They probably think that because it's more commonly known as blood poisoning. It's a life-threatening emergency is basically what it is. It happens whenever your body cannot fight a localized infection anymore.

It could be a cut on your finger. For women, it's commonly from a UTI, a kidney infection. Wow, okay. I didn't even know that you could get it from something like that. Yeah. I feel like maybe I correlated it as like if you get a surgery, because you can get it from that too. Like if you get a surgery, right? It's really common after surgery.

It's really common in older people as well, geriatric patients. It's not picky about who it chooses. It can choose anybody at any time. And I'll get more into that later on from my experience. But it's basically just your body's overreactive and toxic response to an infection within itself. So what happens is your immune system. It usually is working to fight off any infection that you have. and it stops fighting it.

And instead it turns on itself and it attacks, it attacks your organs, it attacks your body. Your blood is pumping through your body and it's infected with the infection that is taking over. So your organs start shutting down. Typically the kidneys go first, liver, your heart gets damaged. Your brain, if you have a high enough fever, cooks itself, basically. So that's what happened to me. There's three stages to sepsis. There's the sepsis. That's usually the initial diagnosis. If you catch it early enough, there's regular sepsis, quote unquote regular sepsis, severe sepice, and then septic shock. Severe sepsis is typically when the organ damage starts happening. Septic shock is worse. It's kind of the third stage, the final stage where it's kind of like, are you going to be able to live or not? And that's simply because, you're, you your blood pressure is bottoming out. Your blood is your rapid heart rate, but you have no,

you know, actual blood pressure pumping through. You're losing oxygen really quickly, especially to your brain. So septic shock is the most severe stage, like I said, and the patients are typically treated in ICU. I didn't know this until after, but the doctors and nurses typically refer to patients that are dealing with severe substance and septic shock as the sickest people in the hospital. I definitely know now that because I felt that way. But in the moment, I didn't know how serious it was. So my story kind of begins in May of 2020.

I had only ever had one kidney infection when I was younger, probably in middle school. I thought it was because I was drinking too much soda. But I drank cranberry juice. It passed. I didn't even go to the doctor for it. May 2022, I was totally fine one day. And then all of a sudden, it was about midday on a Saturday, I believe. I started to feel this really intense pain at my back. And I kind of could recollect what a kidney infection felt like. So I was like, okay, it has to be my kidneys. I work out a lot,

but it has to be my kidneys. And was it just like a shooting pain? No, the best way I can describe it was, And have you ever had a kidney infection? When it's your kidneys, you know. It's like flank pain in the back, like right on the sides. It's very much like if somebody, if you were to bump into a table the next day it was bruised. It feels a lot like that. It's just very sore feeling inside. And then throbbing, a lot of throbbing and tightness for me as well.

So it just progressed. Like I was fine in the afternoon and then probably by 2 o'clock, it just kept getting worse. And I was like, this has to be something serious. It has to be my kidneys. So day goes on. I'm busy. And I'm like, I have to go to the store and just get some medicine. So I went to the store, got some over-the-counter medicine. I was staying with my boyfriend that evening, my boyfriend at the time. And it had gotten so bad that he had to help me get up and around. And I didn't go to the doctor that day. I said, if it doesn't pass by morning, then I'll go to the urgent care. So woke up the next morning. I couldn't sleep hardly the night before. I was in so much pain.

The next morning I woke up, I was completely bloated. My stomach was rock hard. I couldn't hardly move. He had to help me get dressed. We went to the urgent care and they took a urinalysis sample right away. I don't think I had a fever at the time. My blood pressure was totally fine. And the doctor at the urgent care, she was basically checking me over and she told me she could. I don't know if it's your gallbladder or your kidneys. I recommend that you go to the emergency room, though, because of how much pain you're in and your symptoms. Well, everybody knows. Well, the emergency is expensive. You don't want to go to emergency. So I said... Well, also, like, you'd have to wait, I'm sure. Yeah. And I mean, at that point, I was like, just give me something to get rid of this pain. Because at that point, it was like I couldn't, I looked like I was five months pregnant, honestly. Like, it was, it looked like somebody had just plopped a boulder in my tummy. And so,

So I just told her, I said, thank you so much for your help. Please just give me the strongest antibiotic possible. I also had, you know, a prior engagement that I really didn't want to miss that evening, which in looking back, I should have just not done that. But she gave me an antibiotic. I went about my day within 24 hours by that evening at my event. I was feeling a lot better. So I thought, okay, it's fine. It's going to be fine. Next day, woke up. My back was still sore, but nothing serious. I was like, okay, I'm going to be okay. So a few days pass, and I get a call from the doctor in urgent care. One of her nurses had called me, and she let me know that my urinalysis sample came back, and what had happened was I had actually tested positive for bacterial staff, and there was protein in my urine. So I had a really severe kidney infection. And from what I understand, again, I'm not a doctor, a medical professional, but from what I understand, bacterial staff infection through a UTI is typically not very severe. I think that it can be treated with antibiotics, and they didn't make it seem like it was super

severe for me either. So I just said, okay, well, I feel fine. It was three days later. I said, I feel fine. What do I need to do? And she said, well, we're going to go ahead and prescribe you another round of antibiotics. Take those. If you feel better in 10 days, call us, let us know.

You should be good to go. I said, okay, I did exactly that, completely fine. So this was May. Fast forward to September of that year, September 2020. I was completely like out of sight, out of mind with the infection. I was a, there were times where I was kind of worried that something could be wrong just because even though I hadn't been experiencing kidney pain, I have a really close friend to me that has some kidney issues. And, She was like, if there was a problem, you would know, you would feel it. But for me, I didn't feel it the first time. So from May to September, you were fine again. Yeah. And I mean, from May to September, and I tell people this all the time, I was in, and pardon me if I get emotional about this, but I was probably in the best shape of my life, physically, mentally, spiritually. I had gone through a lot of transitions in the previous month. And I was so. focused on centering myself that I was busy. I was so busy that I was like, okay, I'm healthy, I'm happy. My life is so full. Nothing about illness even crossed my mind. Like I hadn't even gotten a cold. And typically like growing up, I got strep like clockwork twice a year. So for me to be, you know, 23 and being out with my friends and living life and not getting sick. And then I was also working in the service industry at the time. I was like, this is great. Like I'm living, I just don't

think about it. You're just going through the daily motions of life, basically. And so, um, September ended, October came around. And at the end of September, I think it was either the very last day of September or the first day of October. I felt kind of icky, just like, not well. And I had fainted once before in August. And I think it was just probably stress. nothing to do with my situation in September or October. But at the beginning of October, I was feeling kind of icky one day and I kind of just slumped over what I was trying to get out of bed. It wasn't like whenever you you stand up too fast. It was like I stood up. I started to feel kind of hot. My body was really sore, but I thought, oh, it's probably just from working out. And then I just

kind of like slumped on the ground. Kind of blocked out a little bit. I was like, oh my gosh, I just vein and again. I probably just am not eating. I'm not feeling my body correctly. So I went to work past. I was fine. Like day passed on. Didn't even think about it really. Just told myself, you need to eat more. You need to be eating more. I know you're busy, but you need eat more. So another week goes on. October 15th rolls around. Actually, it's October 14th. Pardon me. I go out with my friends, my two best friends, and then we had another friend in from Mexico. And we had a great night. We were out on the town.

We were living it up. I'm not a big drinker. I don't really like to party, but he was in town. So I just like, let's go. Let's have fun. I was absolutely fine. Like when I say I was fine, I probably that day felt better than I had the entire week prior because I was so busy the week prior. and I was, I had the whole Friday off. I was feeling great. I'd worked out. I had eaten all day.

I was out with my friends. I probably had three drinks, three, maybe four drinks. We go home. We have plans on October 15th, which is the very next day to go to the pumpkin patch because Halloween was rolling around. And so I wake up at, you know, 8.30, 9. And at the time I'm living with my best friend, she's getting ready. and then I'm getting up and I'm getting ready and I feel not well. Like not I'm really sick unwell, but I'm maybe I'm hung over. I don't really know. I had had COVID before the year prior. So I was thinking maybe it's like early onset COVID. I'm not really sure even the flu. It was just body aches, really feeling brain foggy, not great. But thought, well, maybe it's because I've been working out so much and I don't drink very often. Maybe it just hit me a lot harder than I thought it would

hit me. So I get ready. We go to the pumpkin patch and it's hot outside, but it's not unbearably hot for October. I'm in shorts and a tank top and I'm trying my hardest to have a good time. I'm like, I'm trying to be present and have a good time. But I start to feel that feeling again of oh my gosh, I'm going to faint. Like I don't feel good. I feel like this is the flu. I'm going to faint and the heat was just insufferable. Yeah, that never helps. No. And I was trying. I couldn't. then me, I'm like, maybe I'm from hungover and let me just do hair of the dog. Don't do that. Don't ever do hair of the dog.

Right. So I just got a water. And I was, I felt awful because I could tell I was kind of being a party pooper on the time. But luckily, my best friends are really great. And they just said, let's just go eat. Maybe you just need to eat. So we sat for a bit. Then we left to go to lunch.

And at lunch, it just kept getting worse. It was like, I, this is the point of the day where I was thinking to myself, you have the flu. You have the flu or you probably have COVID. You need to go home and take a COVID test. I was having the body aches. I was having chills. I was so tired. Just could hardly keep my eyes open. Again, no pain anywhere, though, in my body. We eat lunch. I don't even remember if I ate. But we ate lunch and we left, and I couldn't even drive my car home. I had to have my best friend drive my car back to our apartment because I was just completely out of it. So we get back to the apartment. We read back to the apartment. We read. regroup and I take a shower and in the shower I'm like I'm going to faint again like I'm I'm going to faint I'm something is wrong so and I was so weak it was so hard for you to lift my arms my legs I don't know if you're scared of heights I'm scared of heights so if I stand up on something tall my knees start you know knocking together and I was kind of like that so I sat down in the shower I couldn't even finish washing my hair because I was it just hurt to lift my arms up

not physically hurt but it was like it was so exhausting to try to move so i get out of the shower i halfway dried myself off put on sweatpants a sweatshirt and laid on the couch in the living room while the girls carved their pumpkins i couldn't do it i was like i'm sick i just need to lay down and sleep it's off um so i'm laying on the couch and i fall asleep and i don't even know how long i was asleep it couldn't have been more than maybe an hour it was hard for me to get to sleep because this is when the discomfort really started. Just no pain, just like internal discomfort where I couldn't get comfortable. I just felt like my insides were trying to jump out of me.

Like if you have too much caffeine, it kind of felt like that. And I was having that brain fog couldn't catch on to my thoughts. So I fell asleep. And from what I understand, I woke up and I made this really like awful. moaning noise from the couch. And I do remember crying. I just couldn't, I couldn't vocalize or verbalize any thought that was going through my body or in my brain because it was just like this dread almost. I just woke up and it was like sick. That's just how I felt just gross. So I'm crying. I have a really high pain tolerance. I don't cry over things like being sick or having the flu. And my friends came over to the

couch and they're sitting there talking to me and I go to get up and I had completely soaked through my clothes and sweat like onto the couch. It looked like I had wet myself. My sweater was completely soaked through. My hair had dried in the time I slept and then was wet again from like the root all the way like down to my chin because I was sweating so much. This is when I realized that this was probably really serious because I had had COVID before and COVID was not fun for me. But it wasn't this bad. And so I was thinking, okay, this is pretty serious. I didn't want to go to the hospital. And so my, I was laying there, oh, okay, I'll be okay, I'll be okay. And finally my best friend, Nessa, she said, no, you need,

she was, I really think you need to go to the hospital. Well, my mom's out of town at the time. My dad is at home and we don't like going to the hospital. We don't like going to the doctor anyway. So I was trying to put it off. And finally, they persuaded me to go. And I knew I needed to go. It was just one of those things where it's like the money, the time, what if they just told me that I just need to hydrate and take some vitamins and go home. It's a waste of time. I get in the car and this is where time starts to slip away from me. I try to piece it all together. Take your time. I, we get in the car and I just know that I'm in pain. And it's not like, um, ouch, this hurts pain. Like I hurt my bone or I have a bruise. It was like, if you read a book

and it says, you know, I was in, the character was in this numbing pain. It was like that in my whole body. I like to tell people the best way I can describe this, which is, it's not, it shouldn't be so funny. But if you've ever seen Breaking Dawn with Kristen Stewart and she's like in her body, screaming because she's going through that transformation internally. That's kind of what it felt like for me, but in waves. It was like I was so achy and cold and then hot that it was like numbing me. And then all of a sudden I'd get this wave of just intense, just fiery hot pain. None of it was localized at this point. It was all over me. It was in my body. So we wanted to go to the hospital that I usually go to for physicians and specialists and things along those lines.

We couldn't make it to that hospital. We needed to just get me to the emergency room as quickly as we could. And so we went to the first one that was available for us. So we get there. I'm incoherent at this point. I remember being in the car and my hands were going numb. My feet were going numb. I started to feel numbness in my legs.

and I remember being in the car and my friend was asking me a question or something and my response was something that only a severely intoxicated person would probably be able to piece together or say like I wasn't making any sense and I remember in my brain thinking I'm not okay I'm not okay, I need help. And then all of a sudden it was like this very eerie, like, it felt like a wave of peace almost came over me. And it felt like maybe the hand of God came into my body and just squeezed really, really tightly and was like squeezing the air out of me. And I just heard this voice in my head saying, you're dying. You're dying.

You need to try to breathe, get air. you're not going to make it. Like just get to the hospital because you're not going to make it. And I had never had that thought before. So that was scary too because I'm, I can't speak. I can't verbalize any of my pain. I can't explain what I'm feeling really at all. I can just cry and moan. But I have this completely solid thought in my brain. That doesn't even sound like me. That doesn't sound like anybody I know telling me you're dying. You're not going to make it. And then not on top of that, just feeling these feelings in my body that I had never felt before. It was a kind of pain and a kind of just numbness that I had only ever read about in books and it was out of body.

Right. I was completely out of my body. I didn't know what was going on. So we get to the hospital and I call my dad and my dad was at home. My mom was out of town and my dad still feels bad about this to this day. Sorry, Dad. I know you didn't want me to say this. I love you so much. You're my best best friend in the whole world. But dads are dads sometimes. And he's like, just go home. They're just going to give you medicine and there until you go home. So just wait until you go to the doctor in the morning. And I remember vividly almost listening to him. And then that voice came back and said, don't go. You need to go inside. So I told him, I said, listen, I don't get sick very often. I don't like going to the doctor or the hospital. I know something's wrong and I need help. So I'm

going inside. And thank God I did because I went inside. I get to the lady at reception, bless her heart. I probably scared her half to death. I looked a mess. And I had a mask on because at the time I was like, this has to be COVID. Honestly, I was still like whatever thought that I could gather in my brain, I was like, this has to be COVID. There's no way it's not. Right. because I had heard some COVID horror stories. So I was like, okay. Right. And like the range of the symptoms with that, it's like you never knew.

Yeah. And I mean, how could I? I was just like, I didn't even know what was going on other than like, I'm really sick. I need help. Yeah, I was going to say too. Like, I don't know if this is the same for you, but I've always dealt with like anxiety just throughout my life. And whenever I feel sick, if it gets really bad, it's almost like your brain can make

it even worse because it's so scary. And you're like, wait, this is serious. And then your own mind will just like. like really intensify it all at once too. And I am, I was before this notoriously the hypochondriac for the family. I'm like, oh, some things in my eye. I need to go to the optometrist. I'm dying. Yeah. My headache, it's a migraine. I'm going to have a stroke. Like that was always me. So I think too, like we rather be safe and think the worst and plan for it than be like, oh, it's nothing. Yeah, because then whenever it is something, you end up in your deathbed.

Yeah. So, and nobody has ever said anything to me about being on hypochondriac since his experience. And I'm so thankful for that. Because I, I've listened to trust, I've learned to trust and listen to my body through this. And it was scary because I also, with my dad, you know, he really, you could tell he wanted to be there for me, but it was also one of those things where he was, he was almost like, 40 minutes away. And it was like, okay, if they tell you that you're fine, then it's going to be frustrating for you. my dad's going to be frustrated, like my mom's going to be frustrated because I went and insurance is great, but you're still spending a lot of money to go to the emergency room and you're just getting told to go home and drink more water. Like that's just a frustrating situation, but the panic that was

setting in was taking over. And I was like, something is really wrong right now. So the lady at the reception, it's a glass window and I sit in the chair. And this is like, this is from what I can gather from what my friends have told me, from what I remember, I sit in the chair. And I'm, I cannot verbalize how terribly in the moment that I'm feeling, it's just like, I felt like I had, I felt like I had taken something. And I, I didn't know what was going on. The lady at the reception asked me more than once, did you take something? Did you take drugs? Are you okay? Why are you crying? I was like, I'm, pain. That's all I could say. I'm in pain. And she was like, okay, well, I'm going to, I couldn't

even fill out the forms all the way. I was like, I was shaking. I was trying to get fumbling with my insurance card. My poor friend Nessa, she has, you know, nobody likes the hospital. She especially doesn't like the hospital. My friend Abby is just trying to park the car, figure out what's going on. I'm like fumbling over myself, crying hysterically, snodding into this mask. I feel like I'm going a fall over at any moment. And I just keep telling her, I'm in pain. That's all I can say. And so she goes, okay, well, go sit down. So I go sit down in the waiting room. And again, that voice came over me and was like, tell them you're dying. Tell them you can't breathe. Because at this point, I couldn't breathe. At this point, I was breathing so rapidly. Because I wasn't like sobbing, crying, but it was just constant,

tears, pain, pain coming out. And I was. was breathing so rapidly, but I still felt like I was spinning. Like I couldn't sit up straight. I wasn't getting air. And I just wanted to tell somebody, hey, I'm in pain. Somebody, please help me. I can't breathe. Like, I don't feel like I'm breathing. I don't feel like I'm getting air. So a nurse came out. And she asked me the same thing. Are you okay? Did you take something? And I looked at her. And I, this is when I started getting really frustrated. And I don't ever, I'm not a mean person. I really try my best to be so understanding and all situations have patients, especially for health care workers during this time. I mean, it was 22. So we're honestly kind of still coming out of

COVID. They're stressed. And so I tried my best not to be snippy with her. But I just told her the same thing I told the receptionist. I just, I needed to, I wanted somebody to help me. And that's what I was just screaming in my brain. I'm just sitting there trying to explain, I'm in pain. And this voice in my head is screaming at me. Talk. Tell them. You're not, you're dying. You're dying. You can't breathe. And I can't move my mouth. I can't hardly move my body. So I just look at her and I think that the look that I gave her was probably like, someone please just help me. Hey, I'm Jeremy Schwartz from American Criminal. On this season, robbery gone wrong or cold-blooded murder. Either way, Boston will never be the same. Listen to American Criminal, the murder of Carol Stewart, wherever you get your podcast.

or to get early at free access, subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or at Americancriminal.com. Like, at that point, I just wanted somebody to pull me out of my own body. Somebody please just help me. Again, at this point, I don't feel any localized pain anywhere. Like, it was just all over. Fingers to toes. I felt it in the ends of my hair, like pain vibrating. So they take me back, they weigh me, they make me get undressed in an emergency room. It's a closed emergency room. The doctor comes in there. Again, she asks me what's going on and I just don't even think I answered her at that point. I was like, I have been through too many people already. Like I'm, I wasn't even coherent, really. I feel like I was. And you don't even know either what's going on.

No. And that was the hardest part too is like, I know that it's so important for an emergency situation, try your best to tell somebody what you're feeling or tell your symptoms or explain what you're going through to the best to your ability, but I, like, I physically couldn't open my mouth. Hardly at all. So they take my temperature, and I'm 107 and 8. 107.8. It was my temp. And the doctor goes, well, you should take your beanie off because it's causing your fever

to be higher. And I look at her, like she was out of her mind. Right. I said, okay. So I took the beanie off, and she checks it again, and it's 107, 8. And this is whenever I start to realize, okay, this is really bad. Like, this is not good. So then she leaves to go get a nurse.

The nurse comes in to check my blood pressure, and I was bottoming out. My blood pressure was not good at all. And I only know that because the moment my blood pressure registered, the nurse walked out of the emergency room, and I don't know what she said verbatim, but she walked out and she immediately. yelled down the hallway a code. And so then all of a sudden it was like chaos. I had that nurse come back in. I had another nurse come back in. There was a guy with a machine that came in. And from the moment that it was probably, I went from one nurse being in there to like six people and not including my two best friends that were sitting there not knowing what was going on. They're probably so traumatized at this point. They're like, oh my gosh, she's dying.

So immediately I get something put on my finger. I'm assuming it's for my blood pressure. I get an IV catheter in both arms at the same time. One here, one here. And then they pull up my shirt and they are immediately putting stickers on me. I have stickers from my chest all the way down to my ankles. They're hooking me up to fluid on one side. And then on the other side, they're taking cultures, which I had never experienced.

You know, you go to the doctor and you get the little tubes of blood going out. No, I look over and they're like actual like bottles. They're like vials. And they're taking about four. And I don't feel anything. Like that was the scariest part was I just felt what I had been feeling, but also less pain and more just quiet. Like almost settling into it. You know what I mean?

and it was scary. That moment was scary because there was so much movement going on around me. I felt like the world was spinning around me. But all I could do was sit there and just basically wait to die is what I was feeling like. It was just like, this isn't real. It just felt like I was in a dream, honestly. It was like, this isn't real. And I was just crying.

All I could do was lay there and cry. I just felt like I was trapped inside my body. and I couldn't move and my two best friends stayed with me. The doctor came back in and was talking to me. I hadn't gone to the bathroom and nobody had asked me if I wanted to do a urinalysis sample at this point because of the situation being so urgent. So I'm laying in the bed. It had to have been, I want to say maybe like 45 minutes. and I'm still feeling really bad. I can't even sleep because I'm in so much pain. And the doctor, a new doctor comes in. He's a traveling doctor that was at this specific emergency room. He was really kind. He came in and he told me I had been experiencing severe sepsis and that I was

now in septic shock from what he could pinpoint stemmed from another. asymptomatic kidney infection. So at the time, I'm thinking there's no way. I have had no symptoms of a UTI. And I didn't the first time either. I had no cloudy urine. I had no back pain. I had no burning when I was peeing. No fever. Nothing. Like everything you Google when you Google what is a UTI and what are the symptoms, I had none of it. And so I was just thinking there's there's no way that I have a kidney infection and it got this bad and I did not know. And he told me, he said, he said you could have just been asymptomatic to it again. I still don't know what that means. I still don't even know how that's possible.

I've tried to figure it out. I still see a doctor about it. And I just basically have to go in and make sure that I'm okay and then I'm, you know, there's no protein in my urine every three months is what I do now. But yeah, he asked me that I do a urinalysis. sample whenever I could. But with sepsis, you have very little urine output. So I hadn't peed in probably like eight hours. And I didn't even realize it until that point. So you were at like the third and most intense stage. Yeah. I had been, I woke up with sepsis that day. And I went through. Which is crazy because you said it went from nothing to like everything all at once. Yeah. It was like, and I didn't feel it. You had no warning. No. My warning was that.

I woke up and I felt not good. Like I felt kind of icky-sicky. And I was like, okay, well, maybe I'm hung over. Probably shouldn't drink. And then all of a sudden it was severe subsis. And this was the craziest thing that I learned after the fact. And the doctor kind of told me when I was in the hospital, he told me that night. He said, if you had waited maybe even eight more hours, the situation would be very different and you probably would not have made it.

Um, sepsis for every hour that you lose on appropriate treatment for sepsis, your chances of surviving go down by 8%, 8% or 9%. And at this point in the evening, I had been in this process for at least six hours, maybe even seven. Um, so that's about half. I was flipping a coin at that point. And I didn't even know it. Um, and I didn't even know it then. whenever he told me. I'm not processing it. I as an adult had only heard of older people getting sepsis. And you still don't know what it is. I mean, you're like, that sounds awful. I'm so sorry. So he tells me this and I'm sitting, I'm laying there in the bed and I'm like, okay, I hear it. I realize it's serious. I don't know how serious it is yet. I don't know how serious it's going to be for me. And at that point, you're probably just glad, okay, finally someone's

diagnosed me with something. Yeah, because I knew something was wrong. Yeah. And I had, I have friends that work in the healthcare industry, so I've heard the word substance get thrown around a little bit. I've heard stories and passing of like, oh, they had subsist and, you know, so-and-so passed away. So I knew it was serious. Yeah. I didn't know how serious it was for me. And obviously I just wanted a diagnosis, but then I get it and I'm like, okay, what are we doing? What does that mean for me? And naturally, too, I think when you think, oh, I'm young, my chances are higher. You know what I mean? You're not thinking. Oh, yeah, no. It doesn't. And you don't, I didn't realize until later, it really doesn't matter.

I mean, I think it does matter in some regard because if I wouldn't have been physically as well as I was, I don't think I would have had the same outcome. I don't think I would have had the same experience. Today's episode is sponsored by Factor. Now, I know summer is coming to an end, but that does not mean that just because the colder weather is coming and we're going to be bundling up that we eat unhealthy and we get out of shape. It's still important that we're meeting our wellness goals all year round and with, Factor, that has never been easier. Factor has a menu of chef-crafted meals ranging from calorie smart, protein plus, or keto. These meals are fresh and they are never frozen and I don't even want to hear the excuse that you are too busy or you don't have enough time to cook because

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I was working out regularly. I was eating very well, just very fulfilled at every aspect of life. And I think that that's what really pillared the strength in that situation for me. But if I would have been me from a year prior, I don't think I would have been flipping the coin. I think I would have probably been in the ICU fighting for my life. And so my friends go home. I tell them, you know, you don't have to stay. It's fine.

It's probably almost 3 in the morning at this point. And they go home. I text my dad and I tell them, hey, hey, sweetie, I'm staying. And that's what he knew he was in trouble. That's what he knew mom was about to get him. Because he was like, okay, well, let me know if you need anything. I'll come now if you want. I said, no, don't worry.

I'm just going to ride it out for the rest of the night. So typically patients with septic shock go into ICU. They didn't have an ICU room open for me. So my first night in the hospital, I stay in this emergency room. They roll in these machines that I have to be hooked up to. And oxygen, I have bags in each arm, each IV. and it is freezing cold. I'm in this cold room on a hard emergency room bed.

They refuse to give me an extra blanket because they're trying to get this fever down or whatever it was. And I'm just laying there in delirium. And this nurse comes in, she's so sweet. She keeps telling me, you know, you try to go to the bathroom, just try to go to the bathroom. I'm like, lady, I can't even, I don't even know where I am. Right. Like, it was so, I have never experienced something like that before where. one moment I was in reality and then it felt like I had fallen to sleep but I was like dreaming of the reality I was in. It was just slipping past me every five to 10 minutes. I would kind of like doze off and then wake back up and be like, oh, where am I? What's going on? Yeah. So the next morning, they told me, okay, we're going to move you into ICU because my blood pressure for the next six hours still would not stabilize. I would be okay. And then all of a sudden, my fever would spike again and then it would bottom out.

I had to be on oxygen still, so they were like, okay, we're probably going to move you to ICU, we'll keep you updated. I said, okay. At this point, I knew it was pretty serious. I was starting to kind of become more coherent. And so we've dealt with a lot of loss and stuff in our family, and I knew that because of how close our entire family is, if I would have message, if anybody would have said anything, I would have had my entire family put their lives on hold to be there for me. And I didn't want that, not only because I knew it would be hard for everybody, because of what we experienced in our family, but also because I finally went to the bathroom that morning, and I did not look okay. I did not look like myself. When my grandma passed away, she really didn't

want anybody to see her that way. She just wanted to be remembered as she was when she was healthy. and that next morning, because I was still pretty much in the red zone, and I saw myself, I was like, I do not want anybody to come see me like this. If something gets worse, if something goes awry, I don't want anybody that I love putting their life on hold to see me like this, if it's like, if it's not going to get better. So it was a few more hours went by, and I'm just laying there twiddling my thumbs basically in and out of sleep. and at this point they had given me fluids and antibiotics so whatever they were giving me was helping it just wasn't healing yeah um it was more so just like a band-aid until we get me we got me into a room they get me in a room and i do remember i was this the doctor she was so upset about you about me wearing a beanie the night before and she was the one that rolled me out and i was like don't forget

my beanie don't forget my beanie grab my beanie please um and she was so nice the next morning i'm sure she was just tired the night before but she got my beanie for me she took me up to my room. And again, I just got hooked up to machines. And I was just laying there. And I was like, oh, my God, this is awful. Like, can somebody please talk to me? Somebody please tell me what is subsist. What is going on with my body? Why do I hurt? How do I, like, can I? How did I get here? Yeah. And it, you know, there wasn't a lot of communication. They were busy. And I get that. And I was stable at that point. I was stable. So I was like, okay, it's fine. So I have two. IVs, two IVs, two IV catheters, one in each arm. I'm on a lab rotation. So I'm in this room

and I'm trying, you can't, it's really difficult to sleep in the hospital, especially when you're sick. But I'm on a lab rotation. So every four hours, I have a nurse coming in and taking blood samples. And then I also at the same time have other nurses coming in, getting me to stand up and try to walk to the bathroom to go to the bathroom because they need me to pee. If I'm not peeing, then I'm still basically in the red zone is what they told me. And after I try to go to the bathroom, which I named my little, there was a machine I had to pull with me when I went to the bathroom and I named him something silly, but he was like my best little buddy, just creaking all the way to the bathroom. The nurses were so sweet. And I know I was stinky and sweaty and gross,

but they were so sweet to me. And I would try to go back to the room, lay down. And then I there was another nurse that came in, she would help me move my arms around, move my legs, because I didn't know at the time, but people, it's common for people to lose limbs with subsist. They lose fingers, they lose toes. Some of them, you know, they get amputated at the knee. And is that just from like a lack of circulation? I think it's from probably the lack of circulation, but also it has to do with the infection probably. From what I, from what I, from what I know of it. I think it is probably from the infection.

Circulation infection, it's basically like your whatever, like at your extremities are just kind of dying. They're dying. They're not important whenever your body is trying to survive. So it's kind of like whenever you get frostbite, you know what I mean? Which is unfortunate. It's super sad. So yeah, they were moving year round, which was so painful.

That was, you know, my mom had come into town. the next day she got there as quickly as possible. My dad had to work. And then my friends, I told them not to come to the hospital. They offered to bring me my work stuff and come see me. And I was like, no, I don't want it. It was so sweet for everybody to want to be with me. But I was like, please don't tell anybody.

Like, do not come. Then evenings were the hardest because, like I said, I was happy to get woken up to do labs and then go to the bathroom. And then the nurse would come in and move me around. and I think from what I can remember, I don't know why I did this. I had to get my tubes moved around a lot just because I was scared to bend my arms with the IV catheters. Yeah, so I was like, and the nurse coach was like, honey, you have to move your arms. Like we need to get you moving circulating. I'm like, no, it's going to break off inside me.

Like I need to lay. So I was kind of just like laying there with two pillows underneath my arms. So I'm already not comfortable. and that's when the fever started to come and go. And it wasn't like a, oh, let's get you down to like 101 and then maybe you'll jump to 102. It was like, okay, but even on the third day, I was still at 104. I think it was like 103-7 and then I would jump up and it would spike and then it would go down. And it was delirious is what it was.

It was not, it just wasn't obtainable for me at that moment to sit there and be like, have a conversation or thought. So I'm laying there in pain and I don't want to speak. I'm so exhausted. I'm still in pain. My labs are not coming back clear. Like, I'm still not doing well. And I'm laying there and I'm getting so angry.

Why me? Why me? Why is anybody telling me what's going on? When can I go home? I'll get better if I go home. Just like this rotation of thoughts. and at that point I still had not peed. And so I think this was the second or,

I think it was the third day I was there. The reality started to hit me. That was when I was laying there thinking, okay, I haven't gone to the bathroom yet, and I'm not doing good, the doctors won't tell me anything. And I couldn't stay awake, it had no appetite.

And I was retaining fluid. And I didn't really, I knew it. I knew something was wrong, but I didn't notice it until there was a moment when I was in the hospital bed and I was asleep and I was kind of coming out of it. And I heard my mom on the phone talking to somebody and they hadn't cried in front of me at all at this point. They were just more worried. And I think that, I don't know, she must have been talking to a family member or something, or maybe a friend from work. And she just got emotional. You know, she made a comment about how I was retaining fluid and they were still kind of worried.

And I woke up and I tried to eat and they left. And I started to feel pain again. And it was like, I felt like a water balloon that was about to bust open. And so I told the nurse, I was like, I think something's wrong. I can't go to the bathroom. And I'm in a lot of pain. and she was like we're going to take you off the fluids for just a little bit so she took me out the fluids and I went to the bathroom to go look at myself and I literally looked like I had gained probably 20

I was like all anything they were putting in my body I just was holding on to so I was like I had never practiced really centering myself before this or talking to myself and I remember being in that bathroom and telling myself, you have to go to the bathroom. You are going to be okay. You cannot be here for much longer than today. You need to go to the bathroom. So I went back to the bed. The nurse came back in and I asked her, I was like, what can I do? Is there something that I can do to go to the bathroom? Is there anything that helps? And she was like, well, the doctor actually is talking about giving you a catheter. And that's when I freaked out. I don't know what it was about the catheter, but I was like, hell, no. You are not sticking nothing.

No, I am already, I got things sticking out of places I don't want them already. I want to save this private space for me and me alone. Please, my booty crack is out already. Do not do this to me. I was like at my lowest low. I was like, please don't. My hair was so gross too. So I told her, I was like, my mom, she came and she had put dry shampoo in my hair or something. And I don't think I told her about the catheter. But after she left, I went to the bathroom. And I put my hair up in a little ratty bun. And I was like, you're not leaving this bathroom until you go pee. So I rallied. And I just sat. there on the toilet and I waited and waited and waited and finally I had the tiniest bit of urine come out. Did it burn? No. Okay.

No, it didn't burn it on. That's what was so crazy. It's just no pain. Not even in my kidneys at this point still. I had no pain. And I don't know if it was because my entire body was already in pain. I mean, to backtrack, it was the first day that I was in my general admissions hospital room.

I asked, I almost asked the nurse to give me morphine because I was. Like, I'm going to, I will die. This pain is so bad. I just, I'm going to die. So when I finally went to the bathroom, there was no pain. And I was like, oh, okay, I guess I'm in the clear. My body was achy. I was retaining a lot of fluid still. So I was like, and I'm sure seeing yourself like that was not easy. No. At all. Especially because I had worked so hard to get to where I was physically before that. And I was in this point of my life where I was waking up every day. I felt so confident. and I felt beautiful in my clothes. Yeah.

And it was like that. It's scary. It's just horrible. Oh, and the decline. Right. The way I declined was just insane to me to be able to look and feel the way I did on a Friday night. And then by Sunday, I was completely a different person.

Yeah. I think it puts a lot into perspective, you know, like something like that happening. I always say that, I mean, it should never take. nearly facing death, you know, but I think that it's very easy for us to get lost in this outside image and how we look and it's great to be confident. And I'm the same way. I get it. But I think having something like that happen and in general, there's so many things in life that can just like shake you and make you realize like it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. You know what I mean? Your health is just so important. Yeah. And that like you said, I mean,

That definitely was a moment in time where everything stopped. Exactly. What is most important right now? It puts a lot into reality. Oh, yeah. And you really find out who is there for you. And to me, even then, it didn't really matter who was there for me or not. It just was about me and surviving.

Yeah. And so I was laying in bed and the hospital bed. And I started watching the Sikh discomfort videos. Do you know those, the Yes Theory videos? No. Okay. I love those videos. It's this group of guys.

and they're all about putting yourself out of your comfort zone. And they travel the world. And it's like say yes to strangers. So like they'll ask a stranger, hey, can I host dinner at your house tonight? And they have to find like, it's a stranger to do it. And they hitchhike across China trying to find rights. I'll have to watch. Is it on YouTube?

Yeah. Okay. I'll have to watch. I love them. Shout out seek to discover. I love you guys. But I was sitting there watching it. And that was really the only thing that pulled me out in that moment were those videos.

It was like there is so much more to life than what my bubble has been. And this bubble that I'm in right now has to be popped because I want. want to be in that bubble. I want to be back out in the world. I want to be healthy. I want to be happy. I want to reconnect. I want to re-center. And it was just like, it was 20, that 24-hour period of go to the bathroom so you can get out of here. You can get it out of here. You can get it go to lab and get out of here and then reprioritize and reconfigure what's important to you in life. That was a 24-hour period for me. Because I was coherent at this point. I was just not feeling well. that night, I don't know what it was.

It must have been the grace of God or whoever's watching over me. But I woke up in the middle of night and had to call the nurse because it was literally like somebody had come and dumped a bucket of water on me when I was sleeping. My fever had broken a few hours prior while I was sleeping. And whatever fluid I had been retaining in the previous day had completely just leaked out me like it was it was soaking wet the bed was soaking wet good um so they came and they changed my bed sheet and even the nurse she's like oh my gosh this is she's like this is good this is really good so i was feeling really good are the best time that you could wake up soaked oh yeah i know compared

to the several nights prior where i was just feeling miserable but i was i was like i'm sorry this is so gross and she was like no this is the best thing ever i'm so proud of you and i mean we were on day four five at this point i think i think we were rolling into day five And I remember, I asked her, I was like, does this mean I can go home? And she was like, well, we'll see. We'll see in the morning. Right. Fine.

So I was like, somebody will give me a glass of water. Dump it on me so I can get out of here. No, I'm just kidding. But she was really sweet. And she was like, we'll see tomorrow. So I said, okay. So I get my labs done. The next day, my urine analysis sample comes back again.

And I still have protein in my urine. And it's not like a you're okay kind of protein. It's a, hey, we really don't want to let you go today, protein. Beaver had been completely gone. My blood pressure was still not stable all the way. It was kind of, it wasn't bottoming out like it was before, but it was just kind of up and down. So I really wasn't in the green yet. And I was so frustrated.

I was like, I'm not sleeping well. I'm getting woken up every 45 minutes, basically. My machines would be, the nurses would come in. I'd have to help get help going to the bathroom. I, you know, just, it was everything all at once. that was keeping me from what I felt like was healing me, which was rest. So I asked them to do another sample a few hours later, and they did, and I was ready to go. I told them, I was like, I really think I should go home.

I need to go home. I can't be here anymore. And the nurse, oh, talk to the doctor, we'll see. I said, okay, started crying. I was like, I don't remember if my mom was there or not. but I was like I just need to go home because two nights prior I well three nights prior I didn't know if I was going to live or die and then two nights prior I was up all night in the hospital room and so much pain and I was like I'm not going to get out of here if I can't heal and like rest and there was no rest

for me it was just constant beeping constant noise my body was in pain I was delirious and finally I'd gotten to a point where they told me to reach this specific mile I reached the milestone in the process for me to finally be released and go home and heal. And then I hit that and they were telling me, oh, I don't know if you can actually go home. And I was like, I have to go home. I am sorry, I have to go home. So they discharged me that night or I think it was that evening. So it was that evening.

And I couldn't go home to my apartment. I had to go home to my mom and dads because one of the stipulations was that I had to have somebody watching me. Um, so still not really in like the reality of a situation, just kind of going through the motions. And I go home and I have to check my blood pressure every few hours with the monitor. I'm on antibiotics, have to make sure I'm drinking fluid. Um, and I'm really weak. Um, this, I remember the first day that I was at my parents' house wasn't really like a reality moment for me. It was the second day when I woke up. because before this, I could bust out two miles on the treadmill in 12 minutes.

I was running. I was lifting weights. I could not even sleep upstairs in my old bedroom because I couldn't make it up and down the stairs. I couldn't walk the stairs. It's one flight of stairs. I couldn't even do it. I had a hard time walking from one end of the house to the other end of the house without being winded.

I couldn't brush my hair because I was so weak. And those were things that were kind of hitting me bit by bit throughout that. first day. So I had a hard time coming to terms with it, how devastating it was for my body and my mind, and I wasn't myself. And that was really discombobulating. And that was really hard for me to swallow. This was like, I think I was there for me a little less than a week, and then I went home to my own home. And I had noticed when I was at my mom and dads, I was dealing with my mom and dad's, I was dealing with some symptoms that I didn't know if it was related to sepsis or if it was related to me just being stressed out from the situation, obviously the weakness is going to play. It has something to do

with the sepsis, but my hair was falling out. And I mean, I have pretty thick, thick hair. I mean, it's not super luscious or anything, but it's healthy. And before, when I went to the hospital, I could put my hair up at a ponytail. I would only have to twist it, you know, once or twice. I put my hair up at a ponytail when I got home. And on the third day, I was at my mom and dad's house. I had to switch out my actual ponytail holder for a small elastic because I couldn't put my hair up. And it wasn't staying. It was so thin.

And that's, that moment specifically with my hair was the, oh, no moment. This was serious. That's when reality actually hit me. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what's going to happen. I still don't know what sepsis is. completely. I haven't seen my actual doctor talk about this because nobody really wanted to explain it to me in the hospital other than it's basically a blood infection. You're dying.

They're just trying to get you better. Yeah. Yeah. So I go to the doctor the next day, the day that I go home to my apartment, I have a doctor's appointment. And she sits down with me and she explains to me what PSS is. And I love my doctor. She has been, she is somebody that through this whole process has let me advocate for myself. and listen to me. And she's never thought I was crazy. She's never told me, well, I don't think it's because of the sepsis or I don't think, you know, it's underlying cause of this or this. She's always just all ears. So when I told her, you know, I've realized over the last few days my hair has thinned out substantially. I'm still really weak. I don't feel like myself.

I was having really bad insomnia. And then when I would sleep, it was just nightmares. That's what it was. It was like nightmares. She told me about PSS, which is basically post-sepsis syndrome. So there's around 21 symptoms of post-sepsis. And it's not just psychological. It's also physical and mental, emotional. It's everything. Like, it literally just completely sets your body off haywire. And so among the 21 symptoms, there's insomnia, there's fatigue, shortness of breath. You have disabling muscle and pain joint pain, swelling in the limbs. You can have repeated infections, poor appetite, reduced organ function, hair loss, skin rash, hallucinations, panic attacks, flashbacks, nightmares. Your mental functioning, your cognitive ability

decreases significantly. You have mood swings, difficulty concentrating, memory loss, and then you can also get PTSD from it. So, I, I'm sitting there and I'm looking at the list. And I have like 12 of the symptoms. I've lost my hair, can't sleep, having nightmares, getting panics in the middle of the night. That's when I realized my cognitive function had gone down and I was dealing with memory loss. Because there were things that I wasn't remembering from my hospital stay. There were things that I wasn't remembering from the night that I went to the hospital.

And it continued for several months. I mean, there's still moments now, but I remember significantly, I was at a friend's house, moving some stuff around, cleaning, and I had opened a brand new box of corox wipes. Brand new box had just taken them out, set them down somewhere. I would say less than two minutes had passed. I turn around and they're gone. I have no clear where I put them, like just short-term memory things. We searched everywhere for them.

We ended up finding them, but it was like, just like even for getting to, take my keys out of the front door when I'm leaving the house, forgetting to put my car in park, forgetting to put the gas nozzle, and whenever I'm getting gas, forgetting to do half my makeup sometimes, like my mascara. I just like, time was just skipping for me. And so I talked to her about it, and she was really helpful, and she was super understanding. And she was like, we're going to do what we can to get you better. But, you know, this is just something that you're going to have to work through. We'll help you with whatever we can. But there's no medication for it. You just take your vitamins. you try to work on your health and you'll be okay. So I said okay. And at this point, how are you

feeling physically? Like was the pain kind of gone for the most part? Yeah. So the one thing that I was dealing with physically regarding sepsis and, like, you know, after I got out of the hospital, was my joints were really weak and my joints were in pain. I was having like random leg cramps. Obviously, my muscles were weakened because I was stuck in a hospital bed for, you know, a really long time. But it was mostly just like I would wake up. My hands literally felt like my joints had been cracked all night long. So when they released you when you were at your parents' house, did you have to go back?

To the hospital? Yeah. No. Okay. So when they let you go, you were able to kind of like get better on your own at that point. Yes. Okay. But I had to go back to a specialist.

That was a stipulation was if there was any chance. changing my symptoms. If I wasn't feeling well, I had to immediately call my physician and then go back to the hospital. And I might be jumping ahead, but basically, since you didn't have any symptoms before, the only way for you to prevent this from ever happening again is to keep just getting these checkups, even though you don't have any symptoms of anything. Yeah. Yeah. I think that there's strips that you can use. Okay. And that's just to test if there's the protein. Yeah, to see if you have a kidney infection. But other than that, it's kind of like how am I feeling physically? Okay.

I will, there is, there is new symptoms. There are new symptoms that I have now, and I'll tell you about that in a second, because I had to be re-hospitalized for a little bit in last May. But yeah, other than the weakening of my body physically, I had no pain. Okay. So at this point, you're just dealing with, like, the post-sepsis stuff. Yes, yeah. And it was hard.

That, the, the biggest hurdle was surviving, obviously. And then it's not even over because you're the right, the aftermath. math of it. And that's what, that was the second biggest hurdle was going home and having to rely on everybody around me to help me live and function like a normal human being. And then also, um, the weakness. It wasn't just physical weakness either. It was mentally, I was so broken. It was like I had been through a car accident over and over and over again. And it was like my body just wasn't recuperating. Yeah. It was like when, I feel like when you, can't even rely on your own brain function and your memory. It starts to make you feel like you're

hopeless. Oh yeah. And it did. It was. It very much was like I would cry in the shower because I couldn't wash my hair. I would cry in the shower because I would wash my hair. My hair would fall out and clumps. And then I would get out of the shower and I would forget, did I shave my legs? Did I get the conditioner out of my hair? It was just simple things like that that that I realized that I was taking for granted before. And then I'm so helpless because I can't help myself. You know, it's my body. don't have any control over this. At this point, they had tested and they knew what bacteria had caused a kidney infection. I still tested positive for there being protein in my urine, and then there was still like that bacterial staff, just a little bit of it. So I was on antibiotic.

And other than the joint pain and the muscle fatigue and the muscle pain, there was no physical, there was just no physical sign of my sepsis, which was difficult because then you have to go back to real life. And people would ask, where are you? What's going on? Are you okay? And you have to explain to them, yeah, I'm okay. And you try to explain what sepsis is. And you get that question, I mean, to this day, I still get the question of, well, it's not contagious, is it? And I know it doesn't come up, come from a place of malice or ill intent. And it, it really is just the uneducation of it. Because even, I think that probably I would have asked that three years ago as well, if somebody said, oh, I have sepsis, okay, well, what is it? Is it contagious? Yeah. I get it. But,

you know, if it's, I take a drink of water, somebody wants to drink after me or, you know, something along those lines. And, you know, we're in the conversation. Like, oh, it's not contagious, is it? No, you're not going to catch it. It's okay. I was just, I was just, just still learning about what this was for me. And my doctor was great about that. You know, I would call her. I'd call the nurse. When I first got out, I was going to the doctor twice week, twice week and a specialist

once every two weeks. And basically, that was just for tests. That's all it was. We could not pinpoint exactly what caused the sepsis or the infection that, like, really nailed in what triggered sepsis. did the staff have to do with it? They think so. Okay.

The doctor, so around two, I want to say it was about eight weeks after I got my diagnosis and was out of the hospital, the doctor called me and said that my white blood cell count from my stay in the hospital was really high, and then my white blood cell count from my appointment the week before was still a little high. Okay. And she said that my COVID antibodies were high. But they had tested me every day in the hospital for COVID multiple times twice a day. Never had it.

There was still protein in my urine. And the first two appointments that I had out of the hospital, I still had the bacterial staff in my urine. But I felt fine. From what I understand, she thinks that it triggered another bacteria to grow and grow and then it caused staff or it caused a really serious infection and then led to sepsis. You would think that with that kind of infection, you would feel pain, which was insane to me. I was like, that's one of the craziest, that was one of the craziest parts for me, was realizing

that something could be so awry within my own body and with how in tune I was with my body before this, I still could not know. And so we, I mean, we tried to figure it out. And basically now it's, you know, go potting in the coast. We'll see if you're okay or not every few weeks. So that's what I do and that's what I'm okay with now. But yeah, I don't think if I got a kidney infection today, I probably would be able to tell because I've had one last year. But I didn't know I had it until I was already about like 48 hours into it.

So is there something that makes you more prone to getting these kidney infections? I don't know, honestly. I need to get more testing done to see if I have maybe like, a disease or something on. So if you got a kidney infection again last year, that would be your third, right? That would be my third in two years. And then with that? And I, again, no symptoms of a UTI. And I mean, the doctor, every time I go, did you have symptoms of a UTI? I'm like, I promise you, I didn't. And I drink so much water. Like I drink the exact amount of water I should every day, taking my vitamins. Even last year, when May came around last year, it was basically right up on

the one year anniversary of my first. out with a kidney infection. And I went to work totally fine, felt perfectly fine. I'm at work and all of a sudden I just get this pain in my back. And I'm thinking, oh, no. It's like it's my kidney. Oh, yeah. And that was 48 hours in to have. Yeah. And that's, it had to have been almost 48 hours. And I knew that it, I knew at that point that it had to have been at least the second day I had like a serious infection because every other time that I had a kidney infection, I didn't know until it was too late until I had to go to the hospital or the doctor. That is crazy.

Yeah. And it's so annoying that there's nothing that you can really do to prevent it. It's more so just like checking to make sure if it's there or not. Yeah. I think that people that have kidney stones, if I could be mistaken, I think people that are more prone to having kidney stones are more susceptible to kidney infection and then also maybe subsist. But I've never had a kidney stone before.

So it's one of those things where it's like, I don't know what's going on. Yeah. It just so happened though that last year in May, whenever I did go to the hospital again, I had protein in my urine and blood in my urine as well, which every other time that I've had an infection or out of the hospital there have been blood and protein in my urine at pretty, you know, abnormal qualities or quantities. And this is still recent. Like this all happened, what, two years ago?

Yeah. And then my most recent hospitalization was about a year ago now. Yeah. So I feel like there's still research and testing. And honestly, I've said this before on the show that it really sucks, but it's a most like, you have to get so many different opinions, take so many different tests to kind of really get to the bottom of what is causing things or why is this happening? And even then, it's like there can be multiple different reasons. Oh, yeah.

And I mean, when I went to the emergency room and that's what I was going to touch on was I had already been to so many specialists. I had already been to doctors. And they're like, well, we're going to figure out. But our main goal is just to keep you healthy and not get you back. Like keep you out of the hospital. Because people that experience subsist, there's a high percentage of them. that within 30 days, they get re-hospitalized and they don't come out or within the first year, they get re-hospitalized and they are significantly more affected by it. And what causes that?

Is that just like a relapse in it type of? Cepsis like wrecks your immune system. So like it could have been something along the lines of I went in and I got sepsis for my kidney infection or whatever it was that caused the sepsis internally. And then, you know, within the next month, I could literally get a cold. And if my body wasn't prepared to handle. that specific bacteria or virus, I could become septic again and die. It could be a cut on my finger that gets infected. Like if you get a paper cut that gets infected, it could have been a paper cut that got infected that I could have gotten sepsis from again a second time and I could have died from something

that small. So that is also part of post-sepsis syndrome is the panic. And the day that I had gotten home, I took a shower and I didn't know skin rash. Sorry, I didn't know skin rash was part of PSS. I got home. It was my first day home. I had my doctor's appointment. I went okay. Took a shower. I got out of the shower and I had a rash all over my body and freaked out. I spiraled. I was actual anxiety attack. Couldn't breathe. The walls were coming in on me. I was having to physically verbalize to myself. You're going to be okay. It's going to be okay. You're not going to die because it was like I'm going to go back. I had to pack my hospital back again. I had just gotten out. I was I was what I think, 13 days out of the hospital. I call my mom and dad. I have to pack a hospital bag, drive to their house. I call my doctor and she explains to me, you're okay, just take like half a binadryl, lay down, go to sleep. If it's still there tomorrow, go to the hospital immediately.

So it was fine by the next day. It was like, okay, coast is clear, you're okay. But that's what I kind of started to maybe get the inkling that I was dealing with something a lot heavier internally than I had thought before. And so like I said in May 2023, I had to go back to the emergency room. I didn't realize I had a kidney infection until it became so painful that I had to leave work and go. Luckily, I was right next to the hospital, so I went there. But because I had to tell them that I was less than a year out from my sepsis diagnosis, I didn't get an option. They immediately put an IV catheter in my arm. And again, with the panic. It was like, I don't it was like I shut down and then I went to the bathroom with my mom and I started freaking out

I'm going to die I'm not leaving this hospital I'm going to die I'm really scared I was crying I don't want to be here and I tried my hardest not to panic um but I was just freaking myself out that was my fear I was like I'm not going to leave this hospital because I've already been through this before and it wasn't well for me and then I have doctors telling me hey if you get substance again you're not going to be as lucky. So we wait and we wait and they prescribe antibiotics. They want to do scans. And scans are expensive. And at this point, I was teetering on the edge of probably having like a mental breakdown because I could not sit in the hospital for any longer. Not only was I scared of not being able to leave the hospital again, but I was also scared of being in there with other people

that were sick because my immune system was shot. And I was like, this is just such a recipe for disaster for me. I need to go home. So they tried to convince me to do scans at night, and I just told him, I was like, I really can't. Like, I know it. I know it would be better for me too. I've already waited, you know, two or three hours at this point. Can we just reschedule it? Yeah.

So I left. I told them I would do the scans another time. They scheduled the scans for me. And I went home and I was like, okay. And basically what it was was protein in my urine, a little bit of blood in my urine. Nothing too serious, but they wanted to do scans because from what they could gather, I probably just had inflammation in my kidney. And the way that they treat it each time is antibiotics?

I think in my situation it has been just kind of like a catch-all. Kind of like, okay, well, I mean, for this specific situation, it was like, well, we're going to give you antibiotics because this is your history. When I went to the hospital, they gave me antibiotics when I left just in case the kidney infection came back or whatever it was. But yeah, basically antibiotics just to kill whatever bacteria could be causing an infection. which I've heard multiple times that being on antibiotics so often is not good for you and that was also concerning to me. So, I mean, I wasn't happy about having to do it, but I was like as long as I don't have to be re-hospitalized, I'll do it. The antibiotics in May of last year, they did fine. But I had to schedule my scans out of the hospital.

I went back for scans. Everything looked fine. But I'm still dealing with lasting effects of sepsis. I wake up some mornings and my hands and my feet hurt. I have days where my muscles are really weak and my joints are really, really weak. Cognitive function has gotten a lot better. I have been writing poetry for seven years now. And before I was online, I was sponsored through a website online. And after I got sick, I decided, okay, well, let's knock some things off your bucket list that you've been too scared to do. So I published my poetry collection. And that was so great and wonderful, but it was so mentally taxing because even the like editing was something that I could do for maybe an hour and then I have to take a break.

I can't finish my thought process. Again, like we discussed forgetting things, texting people, I would be mid-text texting somebody, put my phone down, completely forget that I was even speaking to that person. emails wouldn't finish sometimes there would be meetings I'd forget about um it's gotten better but still not like I I do stay people at my work my friends my family they know like I'm a sticky note queen yeah there are sticky notes everywhere all the time because and not a lot of people that don't know me know this but I do it because if I don't have it physically in front of me I would say seven times out of 10 I'm not going to remember it I'm going to turn my back and if there's one thought that gets latched on that isn't the task that I was doing beforehand. It's just going to be forgotten about.

Now, is that something that over time the symptoms will improve? Yeah, it's gone a lot better for me. There are days whenever, if I don't get enough sleep, it's pretty bad, which I think is pretty normal. You forget things if you're sleep deprived anyway, but it's significantly better than it was before. Before, it was not good. Like, even just, like I had said, as I had mentioned before, putting down the klorox wipes and then forgetting where they were leaving my keys in my front door. I left my keys in my car ignition at one point. Like it was just and it was so frustrating. Like I would get so frustrated with myself. These are simple like daily tasks. Why are you forgetting how to do this? Like this is so strange. And then now it's it's less frequent. And now it's just

kind of like, oopsie daisy, you know, laxadaisical. And I think the whole experience, like you said too, it instills so much fear because it makes you so scared. I feel like there's two sides of it. It's like one side is it could make you scared to live because you're like, okay, I could get one paper cut and just I'm back to square one. Yeah. But then the other side of things is I feel like you can't think that way because if you do, it's going to control you in your life.

Yeah. And it's just it. It did. It controlled my life for a long time. And it really was just having to overcome that fear again, like the seek discomfort videos, being around my friends and family. And doing all that you can do to like try to prevent it, try to catch it, but like realizing that you deserve to live and be happy to. Yeah. And I'm so thankful for my friends and family because the people that knew about me getting sick, they kept it private for me.

And that was so important because I really needed that time to re-center and regroup and like get back in touch with myself. And being able to do that and the healthiest way possible has been so beneficial for me in the long run because now even though I have panic sometimes, or I don't feel connected to my body all the time in those down moments or moments where I start to feel a little bit of that fear start to trickle in. I know, okay, I'll be okay. I made it through once if it happens again. I'm just going to, I'm going to take it. I'm going to ride the water. I'm going to ride the wave. Like it's got it's got to pass at some point. And I think too, like that is a good way to look at it as, you know, with the first time this happened, you had no idea, no clue,

nothing. And it's like the more time that goes on, the more tests that you get, the more research that's done, it's like the more that you can learn about it. And obviously, one of the reasons that I love this show and, you know, having you come on and talk about this is the education aspect of it. And while, yes, there's still so much that you don't know, it spreads that awareness to people because, you know, so many people could deal with something like this, not know what's going on. Yeah. And I think, too, to realize how important it is to, you know, with her health, you can be healthy one day. And then the next day.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I was going to touch on that towards the end of my story because when I came out, as I've said, I didn't know what I needed to know about sepsis. I think my doctors did the best they could to get me better. They gave me a packet. They literally gave me a packet.

It was like three pages that I got to go home and read stuff on sepsis from their website or whatever. And so I had to do research on my own. Well, also, anything varies between person to person. It's not always going to be the same. Yeah, no. So it's basically just like a fact sheet. Exactly.

This is what to do if you start feeling this way again. Right. So I did my own research. And in my research, I found out that only about 66% of Americans know what sepsis. They've never heard of it. Over 350,000 people die every year from sepsis. And not only that, but sepsis is the third leading cause of death. after cancer and then I believe something else.

I don't know if it's heart related, but it's the third leading cause of death in the United States. So it's really serious. So it's also known that 60% of sepsis survivors experience worse in cognitive functioning, just brain functioning in general. And they also require re-hospitalization several times. I didn't know that until I did my own research,

which shout out to sepsis.org, because I found them on a whim. Like I was on CDC. I was watching YouTube videos. And then they popped up and they have survivor stories on there. And that made me feel not alone. And so then I was like, okay, well, let me make a video. Yeah.

And I was going to say too, like something, even like you sharing your story on here from beginning to end, even if somebody isn't exactly the same, it makes people not feel so alone. Yeah. And that I felt so alone in my journey. And so going on social media and I didn't know what. to say how to say it. I basically just laid out what I knew, the facts. And people reached out and they began responding and sharing their stories and their loved one's stories and their own

testimonies and their children's testimonies. And it was such a full circle moment for me because I had been dealing with like something that the world just turns. It continues to turn, but my life didn't get to keep going on. Yeah. And I felt so. so alone and I didn't want to be over-jomatic about it. I didn't want people to think that I was being you know too serious about what had happened. I didn't want people to think that I was trying to get attention for on social media. I just wanted somebody to say, hey, you're not alone in this. Hey, I'm a real person too and I made it through as well. And I found that. Finding the more knowledge that you find and, you know, even just being able to hear other people's experience,

experiences, obviously, it helps you not feel alone. Yeah. But it gives you some sort of comfort. Oh, yeah. It was so comforting for me. Yeah. And it was like, it was, I've been told this and I know this now because I've connected with so many people that have been touched by substance, but I am very lucky.

Like in some ways, I think I told you this when we first spoke. In some ways, I feel a bit unqualified to be in this chair and telling my story. because of how well and how graciously it has come out for me compared to the other stories of other survivors and people that have reached out to me. I mean, losing their moms and their dads or, you know, their 24-year-old son is in the hospital and he's not going to make it. And, you know, oh, I lost my legs. I lost my hands. I'm on a ventilator or like I want a breathing machine, I made it out so, so amazingly compared to those people. And I feel that every day. That is what gets me up out of bed every day. It makes me feel not alone. It makes me feel happy to be here,

grateful to be here. It re-centers me every day. It's like this just wave of gratitude that washes over me knowing that I'm not alone in it. And I also can overcome it if it happens again because there's such a strong community of survivors and people that have been affected by it. And that's why I love telling people about it now. It's hard for me to process. It's hard for me to talk about even now. But if one extra person knows what it looks like or what it can be and it helps them become more aware, then that's important to me. Yeah. And I want to say too that, you know, just because you came out and you are where you are now, which is amazing. And obviously that does leave you feeling so grateful and everything in between that doesn't diminish your story and what's happened

to you. And I think that, you know, somebody that might be going through it might not feel the strength yet or ever to come out and speak about it. And obviously it might not be the easiest thing for you to do even now. But you're, by you doing this, you're a voice for so many. Yeah. And I think that that takes so much strength and so much courage. And that's not something small. Like that's just another part of this experience. And another, I mean, you know, whenever anything bad happens, I feel like the best and one of the only things we can do is look at the positives that come out of it. And this is just going to be one of many.

And I think, too, it just goes to show how important communication and research is, especially on topics like this because not enough people know. Oh, yeah. I mean, barely more than half of the world knows. Oh, yeah. And I mean, advocate. That's my biggest thing. If there's one person that hears this and, you know, says, well, I don't know if I have it or I don't know if my mom has it or if I feel like my mom has it, but she's not getting the treatment she needs for it. Advocate for yourself.

Don't feel like you're being dramatic. Do not feel like you're taking it too far. Your body is your sole provider for everything you do. Listen to it. Treat it. Treat it as well as you can. And when it's telling you it needs help, advocate for it. Demand it. You know, you made a good point, too, of like we live in this world where the world. The world. keeps going on no matter what, no matter what's happening in your life, my life. Like our world could stop, but no one else's really does. And I think that there's so many people that probably feel that way, depending on what they're going through. And it could be a variety of so many things, you know, mental health, physical health, both. But, you know, it's important that, and I've said this too many times, but having kindness, the best that we can and advocating and educating people because, you know, it's easy when

you're healthy and you feel fine to kind of just brush things aside or not really worry about them or want to know about it because it's easier that way sometimes. But I think the more we know about multiple different things in this world, the more that we can relate to people and how people feel like they're heard and understood. And like kind of like when someone else's world kind of stops that the whole world not stops, but they're there for you. And like it doesn't just feel like you're dealing with everything on your own. Yeah. And that's what I was going to say as well is it's important to advocate for yourself. And even though, you know, you don't want the world to stop for somebody else because of your world stopping, try to find somebody whose world, you know,

they're willing to stop for you. It's compassion. Yeah. It's just like making people feel like they aren't alone. Yeah. Like you can take five minutes out of your day to just be like, are you okay? And genuinely mean it. Oh yeah. And I mean, for me, the night that I went to the hospital, I didn't know at the moment my world was completely stopping it was completely demobilized um but my best friends theirs was too and they didn't have to do that they stayed with me a lot longer than they needed to um because they wanted to and they were you know with me the whole ride and their lives didn't necessarily stop completely but they were there when i needed it exactly with me and my family as well and that's i mean i felt there was so much power that came from that as well like i would

I didn't even have myself in moments, but I knew that I had them and they knew who I was before getting sick. And I had to cling on to that because I was like, if there's nothing else for me to cling on to you right now than just the next hour, then let me cling on to them knowing who I am. Yeah, your support system. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. It's been a wild ride. It's been really, it's been more fulfilling than anything.

And I'm so thankful every day, like I said. And I just want people to know that substance is out there. It's real. It doesn't pick and choose. Obviously, older people are more prone to getting it. Pregnant women as well. I mean, there's a lot of minorities, ethnic minorities that go through serious situations when they're hospitalized. They get subsist and they're not advocated for enough and they need that.

They need that help and that recognition. And so I hope that this story brings that to people and they connect with it and they say, oh gosh, like, thank you for saying that because I need to advocate for myself more. You know, my family member needs to be advocated for. So, but yeah, it's been an amazing, amazing journey. And I got to re-center and I've knocked things off my bucket list every, I would say every month since then that I never thought I would. I got to travel the world and I've published my poetry and I've fallen in and out of love and I've done everything that I wanted to do. because I was like, this is so much, life is so much bigger than this bubble.

And my bubble got popped. And so I had to make a new bubble. And luckily my bubble's been floating around. Good, good. And honestly, you did an amazing job, seriously. And thank you so much for wanting to come on here and share your story. Because I know it's not an easy thing to do. So yeah, but you did amazing.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.