43 year old Tatton Spiller is the founder of an online organisation called Simple Politics. Its stated aim, he says, ‘Is just to help people have better conversations about politics and we sometimes manage to do that.
‘Between managing to keep up with the daily onslaught of news and debate, writing a couple of books and looking after my family (four kids aged between 15 and 8), I don’t have much time for anything else! That said, I do make time to watch Chelsea and get to the Spitfire ground to catch Kent playing cricket.’
Tatton has very generously shared his story of sepsis here.
It all started for me on Saturday 4th June 2022 after a grooming accident involving a pair of nail clippers. It wasn’t a huge cut. In fact there is no scar left, no lasting mark. The next morning it was already very swollen and sore. I couldn’t wear my watch over it and it was very tender. That day (5th June), I started to feel a bit poorly. My father and I went to the cricket, but by the innings break, I was too ill and my partner came to pick me up.
Worried about everything, the next day (6th June) I took myself to the Minor Injuries Clinic and was seen by a nurse. They told me to keep it clean and that if it got worse I should come back. I specifically asked about sepsis and was told that it wasn’t as bad as that. By the afternoon I was throwing up. I took to my bed on Monday 7th June and didn’t get up again for a while.
Coincidentally, my partner Katie was in hospital herself at this stage. By Wednesday 9th I couldn’t focus well enough to text so I was sending voice notes. These were less and less coherent so Katie texted her mother to come over and see what was going on with me.
When Katie’s mother arrived, I was almost comatose and completely unintelligible. She called 111 and was told to take me directly back to the Minor Injuries Clinic I had first been to a few days ago. Almost as soon as I got there, an ambulance was called and I was blue-lit to the local A&E, moving quickly through to ICU with a definite diagnosis of sepsis. Whilst Katie couldn’t visit, she was regularly on the phone to the ICU. At this stage they were unable to provide her with the reassurance that I was going to survive. My parents came down and sat by the bed as I lived through my delirium.
I spent five days in the ICU in total. Through that time I very rarely had any idea I was there. I don’t even know what kind of treatment I was receiving. Visitors came and went, but I don’t really remember them. I frequently tried to escape but I couldn’t stand in order to do so effectively. When the psychologist came round (I’m bipolar so I don’t know if they do this more frequently for me) I couldn’t tell them the year, the Prime Minister or the day of the week. I was insistent that it was 1996.
Once Katie came out of hospital she came to visit me. Her presence lifted me out of the fog. She greeted me with the words ‘Hello, my love’. I couldn’t speak. We both wept. That lunchtime I managed to sit up and eat a little bit of food in my chair. An odd kind of date. After that I was sent to the regular ward to recover.
I was in the general ward for about a week. I was being treated with frequent anti-biotics and had many, many tests (X-Rays, MRI, CT, etc.) constant blood tests, sometimes searching for the infections that had led to sepsis. I gradually got better, even going as far as walking to the shower on my own. Increasingly the hardest thing was the ward itself. There was no peace, no rest in that place. My mental health was becoming a real problem, so after a week in the ward, I discharged myself and continued to recover at home. I had lost a lot of weight, grown a lot of facial hair and just needed to be in my own bed.
16 months on I look back at the time with wonder. It’s a hard thing to understand one’s own mortality. The idea that I really was very, very close to dying doesn’t feel real. Perhaps it can’t feel real.
I was back in the Minor Injuries Clinic recently with one of my children. They now have a big, bright and bold sepsis awareness board. I think that I did that.
Unfortunately I hadn’t heard about Sepsis Research FEAT before. Awareness is so important though in terms of spotting the signs of sepsis. I would never have been that close to death if I had been supported earlier. And I would simply say to others, look after cuts, however small. Get them checked out if you’re worried. Get a second opinion if you think you’ve been dismissed too easily. Look out for other people with the symptoms.
Tatton’s story illustrates vividly how something as seemingly innocuous as a minor wound can lead to life-threatening sepsis. Anyone can be affected by sepsis at any time. The potential cognitive and traumatic aspects of sepsis are also so marked in Tatton’s story.
We still don’t know enough about why one person can have a minor injury and recover quickly and easily whilst others, like Tatton, go on to become dangerously ill. Projects such as the University of Edinburgh’s GenOMICC project and Dr Zoeb Jiwaji’s Synpatic study – looking at brain disfunction post sepsis – are focussing on those very things. More research is urgently needed. Visit our dedicated donate page to give whatever you can and help improve outcomes for sepsis patients in future.