“People around me told me I was being a hypochondriac. I knew something wasn’t right.”
Hannah Williams has just graduated from the Royal Veterinary College and is a newly registered veterinary nurse, due to start her first qualified role in September. She’s active and sporty; the gym, running, walking, and university touch rugby and netball all featured heavily in her life before a single fall changed the course of it, for nearly four months.
Hannah was never diagnosed with sepsis. But over the course of her treatment, doctors warned her more than once just how easily her condition could have become exactly that. Her story is shared not as a sepsis diagnosis, but as a warning and a demonstration of what it looks like to keep pushing for answers when something feels wrong, even when everyone around you says otherwise.
A cut, a culture swab, and a warning to “monitor it”
In the early hours of 31st October 2024, Hannah fell in a nightclub and cut her shin open. She cleaned the wound with antiseptic and covered it immediately. The next day, still in pain and concerned by how deep the cut was, she went to A&E herself.
Doctors cleaned the wound with iodine and took a culture swab but didn’t prescribe antibiotics. Hannah was advised to monitor it.
The following day, she travelled to Glasgow. Over the course of that day, her leg began to swell. By the evening, it was significantly enlarged and oozing fluid. Walking had become painful.
“I knew something was not right”
Despite people around her suggesting she was overreacting, Hannah called 111.
“Everyone around me told me I was being a hypochondriac,” she says. “But I knew something was not right.”
At A&E, her wound was cleaned again, another culture was taken, and she was started on doxycycline (she is allergic to penicillin). The pain, she says, was “horrendous” and she was struggling to stand or walk.
“I was in horrendous pain and struggling to even stand. Still, people kept telling me I didn’t need to go back to hospital.”
Sepsis mentioned for the first time
Hannah travelled back to England the next day, in more pain than she had ever experienced. Once again, it was suggested by people around her that she didn’t need further treatment as she’d already had antibiotics. Once again, her instincts told her otherwise, and she returned to hospital.
This time, doctors gave her IV antibiotics and marked the area of infection on her skin to track its spread. It was at this point that sepsis was first mentioned to her directly, as a warning of what she was at risk of.
Hannah was told she’d need to attend hospital twice the next day for loading doses of IV antibiotics, then daily for five days. Still at university, her mum travelled down to escort her to and from every appointment. Culture results confirmed a severe infection and cellulitis, and her antibiotics were adjusted accordingly.
“That’s when they first warned me about sepsis. Not as a diagnosis – as a warning of how close I was.”
An infection that did not respond to antibiotics
After her course of antibiotics, doctors noted the swelling had actually increased slightly, and her white blood cell count had dropped. She was moved onto oral antibiotics for several weeks, but the infection persisted.
Over the following fortnight, Hannah returned to A&E multiple times, feeling extremely sick with flu-like symptoms. Each time, she was given another dose of IV antibiotics and sent home. An x-ray was carried out to check whether the infection had reached the bone.
Blood tests eventually raised concern about a possible blood clot, prompting a full leg ultrasound. What they found instead was a build-up of pus deep in her leg; an abscess that was actively eating away at the tissue and creating a cavity beneath the skin.
The abscess was drained and the wound packed with gauze, fully conscious, in what Hannah describes as “not a pleasant experience.” Crucially, the infection had changed: a different bacteria was now present, requiring a different antibiotic altogether. For the following two weeks, her wound was unpacked and repacked every two days as it slowly began to heal.
“The bacteria had changed. They had to find a completely different antibiotic to treat it.”
A stronger sepsis warning
Weeks later, just as her leg was finally healing, Hannah began to feel unwell again with nausea and a headache, and by the following day she had a high temperature, fever with shivers, dizziness, and felt completely exhausted.
“I didn’t think much of it,” she says. “I thought it was just a cold that was going around.”
Her parents disagreed. Despite Hannah’s instinct to wait for a GP appointment the next morning, they insisted she go to hospital immediately, where she was admitted as an inpatient for six nights.
During this admission, doctors ran an MRI of her leg and a chest x-ray, suspecting pneumonia. It turned out to be COVID-19, and Hannah was placed in isolation where she was restarted on IV antibiotics and fluids.
This time, the warning about sepsis was stronger than before.
“This time, the warning about sepsis was much stronger. I was terrified of what it could mean for my life.”
A slow road to discharge
Hannah developed a rash covering her entire body, which dermatologists believed was likely a reaction to COVID-19, though this was never confirmed. Orthopaedic surgeons discussed options including surgical debridement of the infected leg tissue, ultimately deciding on a wound vacuum system instead. She was discharged on 23rd December to continue recovery at home.
Over Christmas, she attended urgent care to have the wound vac removed and began monitoring the wound herself. Regular hospital appointments continued until she was fully discharged at the end of January – nearly four months after the original fall.
“I am relieved it’s over, and that I’ve recovered,” Hannah says, though she still has some nerve damage around the injury site. “I think more research is required. In my case, antibiotics from that very first hospital trip in October might have prevented the entire situation from becoming as serious as it did.”
“Antibiotics from my first hospital trip might have prevented everything that followed. Wounds need to be taken more seriously, and there needs to be an easier way to get treated.”
What Hannah wants people to understand
Hannah is sharing her experience even without a formal sepsis diagnosis, because she believes the lesson is just as important either way.
“I know how tough it is on you mentally and physically, and how it also affects your family and friends,” she says. “As a student, when you go off to university, you’re very independent, so you need to take care of yourself. Some people might think, ‘oh, it’s just a cut’ when in reality, it’s much, much more.”
Throughout her treatment, it was Hannah’s own persistence, rather than medical instruction – that repeatedly pushed her back to hospital. Friends and family became her de facto support system: friends drove her to A&E, stayed with her onwards, and brought her belongings; her mother travelled to London to help with day-to-day care, and her parents insisted she seek help when she was inclined to wait it out.
“I kept busy with small amounts of uni work towards the end of treatment, and tried to stay involved socially where I could,” she says. “But it was a tough time. It affected my life and my studies.”
Why Hannah’s story matters for antimicrobial resistance
Hannah’s case is a striking example of how sepsis research priorities play out in real life, particularly around antimicrobial resistance.
Her infection did not respond consistently to treatment. She required multiple different antibiotics over the course of her care, including at least one full change of antibiotic when culture results revealed a different bacteria had taken hold. Her allergy to penicillin further narrowed the range of options available to clinicians from the outset, which is a common complicating factor in treating resistant or unusual infections.
Hannah’s initial visit to A&E, where her wound was cleaned but she was advised only to “monitor” it rather than being started on antibiotics, reflects a genuine and difficult balance in modern medicine. National efforts to reduce antibiotic prescribing, driven by the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), mean clinicians are increasingly cautious about prescribing “just in case.” Large-scale NHS research has shown that this approach is safe for the vast majority of patients, but that the risk of a common infection progressing to sepsis is real, if small, and rises when infections are not treated early. Hannah’s case sits within that narrow but consequential margin, and her own reflection that early antibiotics “might have prevented the entire situation,” is a first-hand account of exactly the tension researchers and clinicians are trying to resolve.
The third-ranked priority identified by the Sepsis Priority Setting Partnership, a two-year collaboration between Sepsis Research and the James Lind Alliance addresses this precisely: “the urgent need for a better understanding of antimicrobial resistance and the development of treatment options beyond current antibiotics”.
Hannah’s own reflection – that antibiotics given at her very first hospital visit might have prevented everything that followed – speaks directly to ongoing clinical debate about when antibiotics should be prescribed for wounds that appear only moderately concerning at first assessment.
Her case also touches on Priority 9: “whether earlier treatment at the point of first contact, such as A&E or a GP, could improve outcomes for patients at risk of sepsis”. Hannah’s wound was initially treated conservatively, without antibiotics, and it was only after visible deterioration that treatment escalated. Research into how clinicians assess early-stage wound infections, and when antibiotic treatment should begin, could directly change outcomes for patients presenting in circumstances similar to Hannah’s.
“I think more research is required,” Hannah says. “Wounds need to be taken more seriously, and there should be easier ways to get treated.”
Know the signs: even for a wound that seems to be healing
Hannah’s story shows that sepsis risk doesn’t always follow a single dramatic turning point – it can build gradually, resolve, and then return. Seek urgent medical help if a wound or infection is accompanied by any of the following:
- Increasing swelling, redness, or pain around a wound, even after treatment has started
- Fluid, pus, or an unpleasant odour from a wound
- A high temperature, fever, or shivering
- Flu-like symptoms that don’t improve, especially following a recent wound or infection
- Dizziness, extreme fatigue, or a general sense of feeling unwell that persists
- A wound that isn’t healing as expected, despite following medical advice
“You know your own body,” Hannah says. “If something doesn’t feel right, keep pushing for answers – even if the people around you don’t understand why.”
——
Charity Comment:
Hannah Williams lives in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, and is a newly qualified veterinary nurse. She is sharing her story to raise awareness of how quickly a seemingly minor wound infection can escalate, even when it does not result in a sepsis diagnosis.
If you or someone you know has a wound that is worsening, or symptoms of infection combined with a high temperature, fever, confusion, or a feeling that something is seriously wrong, seek medical help immediately and ask: could this be sepsis?