Now 61, professional journalist Jackie Duda from Maryland, USA calls May 22nd every year her ‘life day’.
She explains why here:
I’ve been battling chronic illness and disability since 2011: Crohn’s, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, POTS [Postural Tachycardia Syndrome] and Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. I relied on a mobility scooter and wheelchair for seven years to help me walk. I was a “frequent flyer” to our local hospital emergency rooms and admitted on the units more times than I can count.
Still, none of these emergencies, could have ever prepared us for what was to come on May 22, 2021, when I nearly died from septic shock. The day, as my family says, when “Mom almost didn’t come home.”
For the entire week before, I was feeling especially “off” but we couldn’t quite put our finger on it. I saw three of my regular doctors and mentioned that my face was swelling beyond recognition and my stomach was protruding and swollen. The doctors put it down to the corticosteroid Prednisone that I was using for my joints and other conditions. They sent me on my way. Even the home health care nurse and physical therapist who saw me at home that Friday were unaware that I was close to death because something lethal was brewing in my body.
Something called sepsis.
By 5 am on the Saturday morning of May 22nd, I couldn’t move my left leg, which had been bothering me all day on Friday. My youngest daughter Alexis called 911 and my husband got ready to help EMS [Emergency Medical Services – paramedics in the UK] to get me into the ambulance. It seemed like just another emergency room visit for me at first. Our family had gone through this many times before with me.
I told the doctor about the pain in my hip, but luckily, he ignored me and ordered an abdominal CT scan instead. As soon as those results and my bloodwork came back, he knew exactly what we were dealing with – an acute colon perforation caused by undiagnosed diverticulitis. I was in septic shock within an hour from death.
I was rapidly intubated because I was in respiratory failure, whilst nurses worked steadily at my bedside to raise my bottomed-out blood pressure: 85/50 and dropping. My heart rate was in the 150s, and my breathing was rapid. The ventilator going in was terrifying and uncomfortable, but I couldn’t move because of the paralytic drugs used to keep me from yanking it out. They started me on three powerful antibiotics through a central vein in my neck – levofloxacin, Flagyl, and vancomycin. My husband watched the scene play out from the hallway, and heard the doctors ask the EMS workers still on the scene and standing just a few inches away from him, how long it would take to drive me 75 miles east to Baltimore. “An hour twenty,” EMS replied. “She won’t make that, call a pilot,” the emergency room doctor instructed. My husband went numb. After I was loaded onto the helicopter, he called our three adult children to tell them what had happened, and that I wasn’t expected to make it home again.
I was flown by helicopter to one of our best trauma centers in Baltimore, Maryland, where I had emergency surgery to remove the source of my sepsis, the tattered remains of my perforated colon and surgeons also placed a temporary colostomy. Upon my arrival I was going into heart failure. About a third of my colon was removed that day. Another six inches was taken when my colostomy was reversed seven months later in December 2021 by the same colorectal surgical team that saved my life from sepsis.
I was in ICU for eight days, the post-surgical floor for another eight before being transferred to an in-patient rehab hospital to learn to walk again. Sepsis left me weak and broken – I couldn’t take a shower, feed myself or even brush my teeth. When I was discharged home in late June, I needed a walker and was unable to do anything for myself. I was worried I’d be a lifelong burden on my family. My hair fell out in clumps, I needed iron infusions. I lost 30 lbs. I needed about a year of physical and occupational therapy. Aquatic therapy – working out in the water – was a game changer and made me much stronger again.
I still have nightmares, and lots of PTSD whenever I have to go to the doctor or have a test done; CT scans scare the daylights out of me. I have become strong enough to no longer need to rely on my wheelchair or scooter so I’m walking to stay fit and help my anxiety. I also go to the gym three days a week to weight train and swim to keep up my strength. I still have disabilities, but I’m managing.
I teach Sepsis 911 awareness presentations in my local community with a mom who lost her 5-year-old son to the flu and sepsis back in 2020. I’m a huge sepsis advocate and frequently visit DC to talk to lawmakers and speak on panels. As a journalist I’ve written about my story for The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/09/16/sepsis-septic-shock-experience-near-death/ and appeared on our local Baltimore news station: https://www.wbaltv.com/article/woman-shares-story-sepsis-awareness-month-infection-bloodstream/45225130. I’m working on another sepsis story for September for Costco Connection. I’ve also been interviewed for stories such as https://www.aamc.org/news/sepsis-third-leading-cause-death-us-hospitals-quick-action-can-save-lives and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13165721/sepsis-crisis-killer-infections-hospital.html.
I do everything I can to increase sepsis awareness. Because I got to come home, once again, from the hospital to my family. Despite all the odds. And I want to help others make it back home to their families as well.
Charity note: Whilst she describes herself as a hospital ‘frequent flyer’, Jackie could not have foreseen how dramatically and suddenly pre-existing medical conditions with which she had learnt to live could deteriorate so rapidly, to the point of becoming life-threatening. Like other sepsis survivors Jackie has gone on to use her traumatic experience to good ends to help raise awareness of sepsis amongst the general public. We are so grateful to Jackie for sharing her sepsis story with Sepsis Research FEAT.