Developing Sepsis From Food Poisoning - Farah's story

Abi Dawson

Hi, I'm Abi. And I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to these Sepsis Research FEAT, Words Of Sepsis podcasts. Over the course of eight episodes, we'll be talking to sepsis survivors and their families about their experiences of sepsis. Some of the stories you hear may be quite painful, many are uplifting. They are stories of shock, fear, sometimes loss, often courage, but also of hope.

Sepsis is a condition that still takes the lives of some 50,000 people in the UK every year. That's about five lives lost every hour. Our hope is that through these podcasts, many more people will become aware of sepsis and that some of the loss and suffering related to sepsis can be prevented as you increase your knowledge and the knowledge of others.

So do please listen, share these words of sepsis and help to raise awareness and save lives.

In this episode, you'll be hearing from Gemma and Helen, whose children both developed sepsis seemingly out of the blue, but with terrifying consequences. Gemma's son William was three when he developed sepsis. He had been at nursery all week and she noticed he was tired when she picked him up, but she didn't think too much of it at the time.

Abi

ife was derailed by sepsis in: 2020

Farah

I just started my role at the GP surgery that I was working at, a couple of months before I had sepsis. I just come out of a relationship as well, so I was newly single and we were sort of in that weird limbo stage of not quite a full lockdown, but we're allowed to do a few things. So life wasn't exactly normal as such, but that was my normal at the time. I was originally diagnosed with food poisoning, so it wasn't straight away sepsis. Obviously I had all the symptoms of food poisoning. I got admitted to A&E and it wasn't actually a few days into admission where I was on the ward that I was diagnosed with sepsis. Because it was food poisoning, I must have eaten something and it wasn't until about five days later that I started to feel quite unwell. You know when your body doesn't quite feel right. I usually don't sleep very well, I'm like tossing and turning, sweating. I started having headaches, like flu symptoms. It was headaches, shivering, sweating as well. At the same time, my body felt really fatigued, really tired. I also had diarrhoea at the time and really bad stomach cramps. My whole body was just hurting and not being right. But I think the part that was worrying me was the stomach cramps, because that's not usually what you get when you got the typical flu. But yeah, I had it all going on and my temperature was just getting worse. Everything was getting worse.

Abi

Farah says it never entered her mind that she might become as poorly as she did.

Farah

I had no idea i had food poisoning, so I called the doctor and the doctor did advise me to go to A&E. I think it was the stomach cramps that really raised their attention. But then in my head I thought I had the flu and for some reason I thought I knew better and I thought, oh, my body is just going to fight this. We were in a pandemic. So I didn't want to overcrowd A&E any more. I just sort of thought I'd get better on my own and I felt like I was being dramatic going to an A&E for these flu symptoms. So we let another day go by and I got worse and then I phoned the doctor, or 111, I can't quite remember, it might have been 111 and the doctor did tell me, you should have gone the first time we told you. I kind of knew he was going to say that. So I remember at home I already had a little bag packed because it's not my first hospital stay. I kind of just got my toothbrush, my hairbrush and stuff like that and I said to my dad, yeah, we should go to A&E now. It was all a very heightened emotional time as it was because around the time I must have eaten the bad food, My grandma, as we call her, Oma, in Germany, because my mum is German, she took really ill. So my mum and my sister flew out to Germany and the plan was that me and my dad would meet them there if things got really bad with our Oma. So half of our family wasn't there anyway, so it's just me and my dad. He took me to A&E and I was just so emotional because I was in so much pain. Even getting into the car, it was hard and I think just everything got on top of me because mentally we're thinking about our family and Oma in Germany and at the same time I'm scared. I don't know why I'm like this, why I'm so unwell, got to A&E and got to the front desk and the lady does the usual questions and I just remember just bursting out in tears because I was in so much pain. I remember someone got me a wheelchair to sit on and they put that machine on my finger. I think it's to measure like some sort of heart rate or something and it was like really high. So we didn't wait at all. They got me in the wheelchair and we went straight into the resus section. I remember my dad had to park the car properly, so he went out and he met me in resus. So we got to resus. The nurse was absolutely lovely. I mean, throughout this whole thing, all the staff were absolutely amazing. She got me dressed into the scrub sort of thing and they were just doing checks on me. I remember she put the cannula in my arm. I'm a bit of a screamish, emotional, dramatic sort of person. Anyway. I don't like needles and stuff like that, so that really freaked me out. But if I'm honest, I was in so much pain as it was. It's all a bit of a blur, but, yeah, she put the cannula in. They were doing blood tests because they were trying to figure out what exactly is wrong with me. I wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything and I just remember I was just shaking, like shivering. I was so cold. And then dad came back in and we just didn't know what was going on at that point. They were just testing, and I must have been there for hours. I remember it wasn't time for me to take another batch of paracetamol, but I was absolutely just begging for it because the paracetamol seemed to calm the shaking, but then it would just get worse again. So it was a temporary fix. So I remember being there and eventually some doctors came out and they said, we're going to have you stay at the hospital. So I sort of said to dad, it's okay, I'll be fine. Just like, go home. I've stayed in hospital once before, a couple of years ago. So I thought, yeah, just go home, I'll be fine and then it just sort of hit me. I was by myself in resus and I was absolutely starving at that point. And I remember they gave me a plain, like, digestive biscuit, and I had some of that, and I just had to literally run to the ladies. It was that bad. It was like that instant. Then I got moved from resus, and then that was the end of my resus section. If I'm honest, I was in so much pain, and it was all very blurry and traumatic. They've moved me into this space, I think because they were freeing up a ward section for me. It was beginning to get dark as well. So they wheeled me into this ward but I had my own separate room because they wasn't sure if I was infectious with something or not. So I remember it was quite dark. It was all like the night doctors, the night nurses were there. I got put into this room with my own bathroom and I remember I was on my back and the doctor was examining me, and I was just, like, crying in so much pain. If I moved, I'd be in such exaggerating pain. So I just tried to stay as still as possible, but at the same time, I was still having really bad diarrhoea. I've never had that bad diarrhoea in my life. That is just completely not normal. It's just your body shouldn't be doing that. He kind of thought it was gastroenteritis at that point. It wasn't confirmed about anything else. So he'd done the checks, he asked me questions, and then hours later, I have no idea of a time scale, I got wheeled into my own room so I wasn't actually on a ward because they still thought I was infectious. So I had my own room. It must have been a couple of days into where I was moved into my own private room. I'm sorry, I can't give you time scales because it's just such a blur, the whole thing. I was there, it could have been one or two days after I had a CT scan, so they were doing checks and blood tests and that's probably when that's when they told me. I remember it's in the morning and it was in between pandemic times as well, so my dad was allowed in there, but I wasn't really allowed anyone else, but they were really nice and they allowed my cousin to come in. My cousin, she's really close with us and she was my next point of call really, because her parents were also away, so there was limited people around, limited people that could come in, but those two were my rocks at that point.

Abi

Farah says she remembers being told she had sepsis and not really understanding what that meant.

Farah

It was in the morning where my dad, he was still working, he was at work. All doctors would come in and then they would tell me that I've got sepsis and I didn't really know what the hell that was. I mean, I've heard of that word, didn't know what it meant, didn't know what the symptoms were of that, but everyone looked at me really concerned, like, really concerned, so that panicked me more. It was when I messaged my dad and my cousin, they've told me I've got sepsis, their reactions really scared me because they obviously know. It was the kind of thing where my dad literally dropped everything at work and came straight away. So that's what really shook me up because I didn't realise at the time that sepsis is obviously, how lethal it is. I had sepsis of my bowel and my gallbladder in the end, and that's when they told me you had food poisoning and it was called Campylobacterr food poisoning, which had turned into sepsis of my bowel, my gallbladder.

Abi

Farah was in hospital for around a week and some of the treatment she had gave us some unpleasant side effects.

Farah

I was on IV fluids, a lot of it. I think that's why my legs literally blew up twice the size. When I got into my private room in the hospital, I couldn't move. I was in so much pain, I couldn't even sit up, I couldn't brush my hair. My cousin was doing that for me, I couldn't do anything, I couldn't wash myself. That's why I say that the staff were absolutely amazing because they literally nursed me. I've never been so bad like that. I was young, I still am young, fit, healthy, look after myself and I have no medical conditions either so it just goes to show that this can just literally happen out of the blue. This time it was because I must have eaten something that wasn't right, that was contaminated with something, because they said it was something to do with poultry. So we did a food diary and sort of counted back and where it could have possibly been. But I mean, some people could have food poisoning and it doesn't turn into sepsis. But in my case, my body just went into overdrive, reacted really badly. My recovery was hard. Just a few days before I was discharged from hospital, I had to start getting moving again because my body was in bits. It was a weird one because I'd lost quite a lot of weight, but I was so swollen at the same time, I didn't really want to look in the mirror, so I didn't really see what I looked like, but I saw the size of my legs and it's quite scary because they're your legs, they're your limbs, and to see your limbs change so much like that. So my dad, bless him, he started getting me walking around the hospital. At this point, I actually still had a catheter fitted in, I remember this. So they strapped the catheter to my leg, they got me out of bed and I started taking my first steps again, which was really hard but my dad, he was so resilient, he was there the whole time. He held my hand and making sure my catheter wasn't slipping down my leg and he was holding my gown as well, so I didn't like show anything, bless him. He was like walking me up and down the ward a little bit. We had a little bit of a plan, we'll go a bit further each day and then by the time I was discharged, still weak, but I could be on my feet.

Abi

Farah's recovery continued after she left hospital.

Farah

en it wasn't until last year,: 2021

Abi

Farah says life has now changed for the better now that she's recovered from Sepsis.

Farah

ing to say it. I think it was: 2021

Abi

And there's one message Farah wants you to hear. Don't ignore the symptoms and don't think you know better than the doctors when they tell you to go to A&E.

Farah

Sometimes I think back and I just think, if I waited another day at home, what would have happened? God knows what would have happened, but I know it's not good to think what if? But, yes, sometimes you do think, wow, that really bad thing did happen to me. It's a good job I did go into A&E when I did.

Abi

Farah's experience highlights how sepsis can strike someone young and fit through something as seemingly innocuous as a bout of food poisoning. Like many of the Sepsis survivors that we speak to, she's chosen to make something positive out of something deeply shocking.

We really hope that listening to These Words of Sepsis podcast has helped increase your awareness of Sepsis. Do Check out all eight episodes in the series and share them as widely as you can, using them to start conversations with friends and family about sepsis. It could save a life, possibly even your own, if you've been affected by anything you've heard or you'd like more information about the groundbreaking research into Sepsis that the charity funds, please do visit our website, www.sepsisresearch.org.uk, where you can also make a donation. You'll be helping us to save lives today and fund research for tomorrow.

Abi

We really hope that listening to this Words Of Sepsis podcast has helped increase your awareness of sepsis. Do check out all eight episodes in the series and share them as widely as you can using them to start conversations with friends and family about sepsis. It could save a life, possibly even your own.

If you've been affected by anything you've heard, or you'd like more information about the groundbreaking research into sepsis that the charity funds please do visit our website. www.sepsisresearch.org.uk, where you can also make a donation.

You'll be helping us to save lives today and fund research for tomorrow.