Hi, I’m an emergency physician and I create medical explainer videos about complex medical conditions because I know how overwhelming it can be when you or someone you love is suddenly dealing with a serious illness. I recently made one about sepsis that explains what it is, why it happens, the warning signs, and what typically happens in the ER. I hope it’s helpful to anyone looking to better understand sepsis.
I feel totally numb. I was released from the hospital exactly one month ago tomorrow. As I was getting sick I was in total denial of what was happening. I felt terrible but I brushed it off as no big deal. I was trying to work the day before I went to the hospital when I could not even string a sentence together. I almost tried to get on a flight for a business trip that night.
When I got to the ER I felt guilty for using a wheelchair because it felt like lying and pretending to be sicker than I was. I told the person who brought me to ICU he made a mistake. The whole time I was there I just didn’t understand. I couldn’t walk for a week and I still need a walker to leave my house. I feel guilty like I should be stronger than I am. (I am 35)
I cried for the first time today about this whole ordeal but it was brief. Just to add-I live in a developing country about 8000 miles away from my family and went through this whole thing without them in an unfamiliar healthcare system.
I am partially back at work now (although I was trying to work from the ICU and hospital and was working the second I got home)
People keep telling me I look great and I am back to normal but I am not at all. I went through a lot of trauma in the hospital but I just can’t feel it. It hasn’t hit me that I almost died. I feel so alone in all of this and no matter how hard I try, I just don’t know how to stop putting on a brave and happy face and going about my business pretending to be fine even though it is wearing me out. I don’t know how to process this. I am working with a therapist but I still haven’t gotten there and really felt what has happened. It’s like I feel like I want to explode but I can’t.
How did any of you process this? I don’t even know where to start.
My tooth started hurting a while ago and I made an appointment for the 13th. When I looked in the mirror it looked like a slit going down the side of my tooth. It has now started itching and hurting severely and my gums are really red and receding, and I’m so scared that I waited too long. I’m probably gonna try to go to an emergency dentist, but please just give me some encouragement
For a little background info, I’ve had cancer 3 times in my life.
The first was liver cancer (UESL) in 2017 when I was 13. I had a liver resection and a couple rounds of chemo and all was fine again.
Until it wasn’t. My liver cancer came back in February of 2025. This time, I had a liver transplant in June and some more chemo.
I went into septic shock in late December and that’s when I found out I got two viruses, EBV and CMV from the new liver. The EBV evolved into PTLD which turned into lymphoma.
I’ve had also sepsis 4 times since last December.
The first time I didn’t even realize I was septic until much later. The first signs were extreme exhaustion and dizziness. When I stood up, my vision blacked out. This is not uncommon for me since I also have vasovagal and hypotension (my BP rests at 105/65 typically).
When emergency services got to my house, my blood pressure was so low that their machines couldn’t detect it. Eventually they got a manual estimate and said I was somewhere around 50s/30s. The funny thing was that as long as my head wasn’t being jostled, I was completely lucid. Not to brag or anything, but I confused the paramedics.
I don’t remember much after that. I know we couldn’t go to my primary hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, because the paramedics said I wouldn’t survive that long of a ride.
So we stopped somewhere closer and they immediately gave me 3 bags of blood. Eventually I got moved to BI.
The second and third time I went septic was pretty unremarkable. A very low blood pressure and some dizziness/difficulty walking were my only symptoms.
Both times however, I did end up in the ICU.
The fourth time, whoo, that was rough. It started with the same symptoms as the first so I wasn’t too worried. I assumed some antibiotics would fix this as they had the last three times.
Then I started vomiting and couldn’t stop. I got burning hot and then freezing cold. I have very little memories of the next few days.
I had to have emergency surgery to remove 8 inches from my bowel. The surgery was two days and I was on a lot of drugs.
This bowel resection has been the toughest surgery to recover from. I still can’t walk very well.
Last Friday, I had an extreme bout of confusion. I don’t know how long it lasted. All I know is that when I stepped out of the shower, I couldn’t figure out where my clean clothes were or even how to put them on. I sat on the toilet seat and just stared off into space.
My thoughts were jumbled and unfinished. Eventually I figured out how to put my shorts on. I then had a mini panic attack where the walls were closing in on me. I opened the door even though I didn’t have a shirt on.
Eventually I make it downstairs where my family was waiting for me because we had planned to go to my town’s Fourth of July celebration.
I told my mom how confused I was and she had me recite my ABCs, count backwards from 10, and drink some electrolytes. She also told me to take a nap.
I felt better after that.
Over the past few days, my breathing had gotten worse as has my exhaustion. I slept most of yesterday and struggled to even wake up.
I think my body feels like it’s in septic shock. I’m not asking what I should do or looking for people to agree with my assessment. I know what I have to do.
I’m just extremely anxious and hoping anyone has some good tips to deal with hospital/medical anxiety/PTSD.
Hey friends, I developed sepsis a few days ago like 4, since then I have tge feeling that I am getting weaker not stronger, I have a lot of water in me ut still i couldn‘‘t stand fot mote than three seconds. It is so frustrating because whnr i was in the thr ICU i at least waljed three steps. I am only 20 and work in a lab. Will i ever recover? When did you see progress?
Making this post for my girlfriend in hopes to try and see if anyone can help us figure out what’s going on. She is 6 weeks postpartum and had a c section. Around 2-3 weeks after the surgery she woke up in the middle of the night with a fever of 104 so we went to our local ER. Her WBC was high along with her lactic acid so they gave her iv antibiotics and other fever reducing medications and that worked and all her levels came back to normal. Then a week later same symptoms come back but this time accompanied by breast pain in her left breast so we go back to the hospital and get seen again. This time they do chest X-rays and an abdominal CT with contrast along with a urine culture. Same thing elevated WBC but this time her lactic acid was normal. She ended testing positive for a UTI so she was given a 10 day course of antibiotics which worked wonderfully and she was feeling great and even for the few days after the script was finished she was doing good. Cut to last night her and our son go to lay down around 10ish and she wakes up around midnight feeling cold so we check her temp it’s 99.4 so of course given how things have been going we monitor it, well within an hour it spiked to 103.6 and she started vomiting so we rush to the hospital. Same tests are ran along with this time a pelvic CT with contrast and a breast ultrasound. Her WBC is normal this time but her lactic acid was elevated at 3.3 so again she’s given antibiotics and this time she’s finally admitted to the hospital. After about 8 hours of fluids and a round of antibiotics her lactic is back down to 1.2 and her fever and other symptoms are gone but the doctors can not find a single source of what’s causing this infection. I know asking people on the internet about a diagnosis isn’t really the best course of action but I feel like i dont know what else to do. Thank you in advance for any replies I may get
In October I went to ER thinking I had food poisoning. Last thing I remember for 24 hours. Well I remember bits and pieces in ICU bp was 50/30 and I was on 9 liters of oxygen spent 4 days in ICU and another 5 days in hospital. I was feeling better but lately I seem to be struggling I am still exhausted easily and when I get tired I have breathing issues and racing heart rate. Plus I have gained 45 pounds so now I am trying to diet and move more but it’s a vicious cycle. Do more than exhaustion and feel crappy. When I got out of hospital all my blood work was good now I have thyroid issues, so protein thing I mean I had 6 test and 4 abnormal I really don’t know where to go from here. Rest, eat right now what? Feels like things are getting worse not better
Hello everyone
I found this subreddit by just browsing, but I thought I’d give my story. I don’t know anyone else in my life who has had sepsis, and I’m still trying to understand all the complications of it and whatnot. Any advice, stories, or support is welcome.
2 weekends ago I was out of town with family and suddenly got extreme chills, nausea, and a migraine I couldn’t describe. I attempted to sleep through the night, but ended up waking up in the morning with swollen eyes and red, itchy skin all over me.
2 days later I was back home with my mom and felt a bit better, attempting to go to work that day. An extreme migraine hit me in the middle of work so hard I could barely stand up. I clocked out and sat in my boyfriend’s car while I called my parents. (We carpooled and I work in the city, so I had no idea what to do.) My mom was in town and my dad was an hour away.
After learning about sepsis, I’m caught up on the symptom: “feeling of impending doom.” I thought it was silly at first, but then realized that’s exactly how I felt sitting there, alone, in the parking lot of my work, crying in pain. I knew something was very very wrong and I felt like I might die.
I was rushed by my mom to a nearby hospital, where they ruled it a “bad uti.” That’s also the night I heard the word “sepsis” for the first time in my life. I thought I would go home that day, but I was taken by ambulance the next morning to one of the best children’s hospitals in the US in my state. I changed hospitals “in case I were to go septic”, still not really understanding it.
Around 2pm that day, my blood pressure hit 80/20. I was exhausted, drowsy, and could barely keep my eyes open. It really downed on me that something was very wrong when I asked: “am I okay?” And no nurse responded. I later found out that I was going into septic shock. I was switched to the ICU where I spent the night, and ended up going home the next day.
Ive been terrified of needles since a young age, so this whole hospital endeavor was definitely something for me, especially since I’ve never been hospitalized before. Tomorrow it will have been a week since I’ve been out of the hospital, and I still don’t know what to feel. I can’t imagine the fear my parents and family members went through. Although I was cracking jokes in the hospital most days, I realized that it isn’t exactly “normal” for 16 year olds to get sepsis?
I can say I survived septic shock though, which is definitely something worth saying I think. I’m still collecting my thoughts through laughs with my family; even through people saying, “She could’ve died from that!” I’m just here to tell my story, especially as a younger person. Any feedback, stories, or support is greatly appreciated, and I hope to continue to recover even more.
Hi everyone. My grandfather went into septic shock on 6/13 after his stoma reversal surgery failed. He was at the hospital after surgery when he got severe abdominal pain and his blood pressure was dangerously low. They had to go back in and a lot of his colon and gave him an ostomy bag again. He was also intubated right before surgery. He spent 7 days in the ventilator before they decided he was ready to come off it. They were still concerned about his kidneys but a couple of days later it seemed to be improving. That only lasted a couple of days and then his labs and testing came back indicating pancreatitis. Its causing him to have difficulty breathing and his kidneys are not doing good again. He barely has any urine coming out and his creatinine levels keep going up. He is on a BiPAP machine but he is so restless and keeps trying to talk to us. He barely sleeps. He's delirious at times. Next steps if he doesnt show improvement are dialysis and intubation. However the ICU doctor told us that if those measures need to be taken its not looking good at all and his children need to come to an agreement on how far they want to push his body. This left all of us devastated and losing hope. Has anyone gone through anything like this? Im not really sure what im looking for here, just needing to let it out. I hate seeing him so uncomfortable and distressed. Its breaking my heart to think this is how he is spending his potential final weeks. Thank you if you made it this far.
Hi, not really sure where to go with everything but just curious. My mom was taken to the er for what we believed was a kidney stone on 06/15/26. We found out that she was in septic shock so she’s currently be intubated in the icu for roughly 10 days. They began the process to wake her up on Monday 6/22/26. Her kidney and liver labs have been lact of better words ass. They’ve been fluctuating her blood pressure meds up and down for days. Her vent settings got down low and has begun to rise again. I work in the medical field so I’m familiar with everything going on but just looking for advice and people’s stories on similar experiences to kinda clear my mind on things.
It was Wednesday, May 8th 2024. I was at work. I work as an Ed tech (para) at an elementary school. I work in life skills so I was working 1:1 with a student. I started having some lower back pain, I figured it was just sciatica pain so I asked the teacher to sit with my student for a moment and I went and got some Tylenol from the nurse. That night was my nieces birthday so I went over for her party. I was not feeling good at all. I felt like I was getting the flu. It was going around and working in a school I’m exposed to it. So I ended up leaving early. I went home and stated throwing up. I thought “yep. The flu. Fantastic”. So I texted my head teacher and boss to let them know I wouldn’t be in the following day and I went to bed.
Thursday May 9th 2024:
I woke up feeling absolutely awful. My husband got the kids off to school and wanted to stay with me but I insisted he go to work. It’s just the flu. I just need to rest. So I slept off n on all day. Waking up to puke. I couldn’t keep anything down. Night came and I texted my principal and head teacher to let them know I’d miss Friday as well.
Friday May 10th 2024:
We woke up and got the kids off to school and my husband took me to walk in care. I told them my whole body hurt and I couldn’t stop puking. They tested me for influenza A and B, and Covid. All negative. They gave me something for the nausea and told me to go to the ER if I was still sick on Sunday.
Saturday May 11th 2024
I woke up at 6am. The nausea had subsided but I was still in a lot of pain. But our boys had back to back baseball games. So I got their uniforms ready, packed the cooler, and woke my husband and the boys. My husband took one look at me and said we were missing the games, he was taking me to the ER. He texted the coaches to let them know she couldn’t make it (he was assistant coach)then he woke our daughter to watch the boys. We headed to ER. I started having weird pain in my leg area near my groin area. It felt like something was moving around. At that point I thought it was cancer because I have a genetic condition that can cause cancer. When we got to the ER I was in so much pain I couldn’t stand. My husband had to carry me in and put me in a wheelchair. They got me in right away. I told them what I suspected and that I wanted a CT scan. This is where my memory gets fuzzy. But basically my blood pressure was like deadly low. They did a urine test and I remember it looked like cranberry juice. It hurt so much. I was in septic shock. They gave me antibiotics. They wanted to run tests but I was in agony. So they gave me morphine but it didn’t work. So they gave me fentanyl but it didn’t work. Then they gave me ketamine. That worked. I passed out. At some point I did get a CT scan. They saw an infection in my leg where the pain was but they weren’t sure what it was. I remember waking up and my husband was bawling over me. I passed out. I woke up and my mom and sister were there and they were crying too. I passed out. I woke up as I was being loaded into an ambulance to transport me to a bigger hospital 30mins away.
Sunday May 12th 2024, Mothers Day.
I woke up in a hospital room. I was hooked up to 3 IVs. I was so cold. They came in for a temp check and my temp was 104f. Nothing would get the fever down and the antibiotics weren’t working so they decided I had to have the infection removed surgically. I woke up later that day. My family was there. The surgery was a success. But I had a wound vac.
I stayed in the hospital until May 24th. I went home in my son’s 10th birthday. I still had the wound vac. Home health nurses came 3 days a week until June 19th, when I was able to have it removed.
If my husband hadn’t made me go to the ER, if we had gone to baseball first like I wanted to, I would have died watching my boys play baseball. That’s what the doctors said.
My husband saved my life.
First time posting here and I guess I’m just a little lost.
I have sepsis in January this year from a kidney infection. I was only in hospital 8 days and no ICU or anything.
But ever since I just feel off and honestly a bit broken I guess. That something is just wrong. 60% of my hair has fallen out, I’ve lost 15kgs, I’m so exhausted doing anything, I feel nauseous all the time, I feel stupid like so much slower than usual. I was getting really bad night terrors but they seem to have got a loss less infrequent and intense. And honestly it’s just really mentally getting to me. It’s like death by a thousand cuts feeling like I’m gradually eroding at the edges.
On top of that I’ve had pneumonia since and then some weird stomach infection I was back in the hospital for fluids etc. all of which started from just normal daycare germs.
I just seem to be constantly getting sick and even when I’m ‘well’ I’m not well. And then I get anxious about anytime I get a bit unwell as it’s like ok will this be pneumonia or the hospital again for a while.
I don’t know what to do. I have a therapist who I’m talking to about it and I’m medicated for the anxiety and potentially depression. I’m also getting tests run as they assume I have some kind of autoimmune or something. But so far there has been no improvement. Is this just life now? I don’t know how to deal with this.
I also don’t know if this is just post septic syndrome and something that is just part of recovery I have to lump.
I have a young family and a demanding job both of which I love so I can’t just ‘focus on getting better’ I feel so stuck and so down about being stuck and yeah I guess any advice on how to work through this. Can I work through this or do I just have to patient
My dad is in hospital with MRSA sepsis and his initial complaint was right side hip and back pain. He has kidney stones in the right kidney and had a uti, so we thought the pain could be from his kidney, but now I’m wondering if the hip joint is septic. His legs are red, but there’s no real swelling. The pain was initially at a 10/10 and began suddenly and progressed within 1-2 hours.