Kelsi Godfrey
Thursday, March 23rd 2023, I gave birth to my fourth son. Everything went well and it was a normal delivery. Friday, March 24th, I started experiencing shortness of breath, but all of my vitals were fine. Then on Saturday, March 25, 2023, everything went downhill FAST. Luckily, I was still in the hospital. My heart rate started going up and blood pressure was dropping. I was intubated. By late afternoon/early evening, my doctors found my uterus was infected and determined I had streptococcal toxic shock syndrome that caused severe septic shock.
I was now in heart failure. They told my husband, “We can keep her on antibiotics, but the infection is too severe - she only has a couple of hours left. Or we can do a hysterectomy - but with her current state, she won’t likely make it through the surgery.” They ended up doing an exploratory laparotomy to determine/confirm how far it spread. Luckily, it only ended up being a complete hysterectomy. After about three hours, the surgery was done, and I was moved to the ICU.
While still intubated, I was not getting any better. I was now on maximal vasopressors and was still failing. The Portsmouth Naval hospital was all out of options, so I was life flighted to the Sentara heart hospital and put on ECMO life support with an Impella pump inserted. I was in heart, renal, respiratory and liver failure with my heart working at less than 5 percent. My mortality risk was very high, and no one was very optimistic that I would make it out.
Finally, and miraculously, I woke up March 31, 2023. I will never forget the cardiologist who came in with his eyes watery who smiled and said, “We didn’t think we’d ever get to see you awake.” It was so surreal hearing everything. Last I remembered, I was getting a CT and fell asleep. I had developed compartment syndrome in my left leg which led to an above knee amputation on April 12, 2023. My hands and arms had also started turning black and blistering, but luckily, they started improving. I was in the hospital for 10 weeks.
In the hospital there were a ton of setbacks like pulmonary embolisms, pneumonia, coughing up blood, and more. I had been to almost every ICU and ICU step down at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, but I made it! I was in Inpatient Rehab for the last 3 weeks of my hospital stay. Two days before my discharge date I went for an MRI and bone biopsy where it was determined I had osteomyelitis. I felt so defeated, but knew I had to keep going. Then, the line of demarcation had formed on my right toes. We had so much hope that they would come back like my arms did, but they were unfortunately amputated as well on June 1, 2023. I was finally discharged and able to go home on June 2, 2023.