Interested in nutrition and a keen gym-goer, 18-year-old Brooke Aspin from Somerset enjoys the normal stuff like having a coffee with mates on her day off.  But impressively she has also been described as ‘the best young football centre back of her age in the country’. Signed by Chelsea in summer 2023, the then Bristol City defender was in training for the start of the 22/23 season when an unexplained pain in her groin subsequently caused her to become gravely ill with sepsis. Brooke shared her story with Sepsis Research FEAT here. 

During a training session in late August last year, the young player began to experience groin pain. Having mentioned it to the physios, she was advised to come out of training so they could look at it. Brooke carried on training, however, convinced that the discomfort was simply the result of overstretching. But later that night the pain worsened and Brooked took the decision the following morning to go in to see the physios.  

The team was slightly baffled by Brooke’s pain and attributed it to a groin strain. Unfortunately, this meant that the promising centre back missed out on playing the first game of the 2022/23 season. Her pain rapidly became worse until the point that Brooke found it unbearable and was struggling to walk on either leg – she describes it as feeling like both had just stopped working. It was in the middle of the night that Brooke’s mum decided that she needed to take her daughter to hospital and the two travelled to Musgrove Park in Taunton, roughly about 10 minutes away from their home. They arrived at the hospital’s A&E department at around one in the morning and Brooke was seen about seven hours later. Little did they know that she would spend the next three weeks in hospital. 

Brooke describes her hospital journey as ‘a bit crazy’ in hindsight. Initially admitted to the children’s unit, she was then moved to a room beside it meant for patients needing care 24/7. She stayed there for around a week but then had to be admitted to Intensive care when her condition suddenly worsened. She was eventually taken back to the children’s unit for the final part of her recovery in hospital. Brooke says that she wasn’t really aware of much at this stage and describes it as ‘a scary time’ – worrying whether she was going to be okay. 

The source of Brooke’s infection remains unclear to this day. It was halfway through her stay in hospital that she was finally diagnosed with sepsis when her body ‘basically just shut down.’ She became extremely cold and went from shaking uncontrollably to overheating in the space of minutes. 

Brooke also describes a sense of everything happening at once – like each diagnosis was being piled up on top of another. She felt that she never really had a chance to process what was happening until she was discharged from hospital and realised what a horrific condition she had managed to fight off. 

Brooke describes her family as having been amazing throughout her ordeal. ‘Without them I wouldn’t have been able to have achieved anything that I have. I think they were all constantly just trying to put a brave face on things, telling me that everything was going to be okay.’ She credits her family and the staff in Taunton as being the people who helped her the most throughout her recovery. ‘I don’t think NHS staff get anywhere near as much recognition as they should,’ she says, ‘Because everything they did for me was incredible. The support that they offered in the background was all there to help me return to my normal self.’ 

Brooke describes a sense of having felt closed off in her own mind whilst in hospital. ‘You’re worried and scared because you don’t know what is going to happen and of course you fear the worst. But I was aware of what my family was going through as well. It has most certainly been the hardest time of my life,’ she says. 

It was about five to six days before Brooke left hospital that she started to feel better, still feeling a very long way from her normal self, including in the way she looked. She started to feel more able to interact immediately prior to her discharge. Once out of hospital, it took around five to six months in total for Brooke to return to her previous form and to get properly back to the sport she loves and to feel strong and confident in her own ability once more. 

A strong believer in ‘minor set backs to major comebacks’, Brooke knew that there were always going to be ups and downs. She had lost 17kg in weight during her illness which was a huge blow to someone who takes pride in the way her body looks as an athlete. She started off doing daily rehab at home with her dad. The two did slow walks and Brooke’s dad bought some equipment to help his daughter – a Swiss ball, a mini trampoline to balance on and different fitness bands. ‘It was really nice to do it with my dad,’ she says. Slowly but surely she was able to return to football and make her way back to full fitness from there. At this stage it was the team physios who stepped in and whom she describes as ‘incredible.’ ‘As much as I got on their nerves and they got on mine, we got each other through the tough times,’ she recalls, before reflecting, 

‘Going through something like sepsis makes you see life in such a different way. This can happen to anyone. It’s a scary thought but it can. Something like this can turn your world upside down within days. So now when you wake up you realise how lucky you are to be doing what you’re doing, day in day out. You’re able to walk to the shops, go for a coffee with your nan, because having had sepsis – in that moment – I didn’t think I would be able to do any of that stuff again. Now it just makes me realise that you really do need to cherish every moment and to enjoy life as much as you can. 

‘Sepsis Research FEAT made contact with me in the summer of 2023, having seen a video that Bristol City put together about my recovery: ‘Surviving Sepsis: Brooke Aspin’s story’. It’s been really nice to see other stories of people who’ve managed to survive. It seems like a good time and place to share my story and hopefully raise some awareness. I want people to realise that someone fit and healthy can be so affected by something so awful. And if I can help just one person then that’s all I want.’