Kimberly Hackett
On September 25, 2011, I started feeling bad on a 7-hour road trip back to North Carolina from Tennessee. I just felt bad and feverish. It continued to get worse over the next week. A lot worse. Numerous trips to the doctor and emergency room. Spinal taps, CAT scans, debilitating migraine headaches, violent vomiting, dehydration, more blood work, more urinalysis, and chest x-rays. Then the night of October 25, 2011, arrived. Late that Wednesday night after a spinal tap, several x-rays, ultrasounds, more blood work and my fever spiking to almost 106, I managed to finally give one more urine sample. It took everything I had in me just to get out of that bed. That urine sample I gave was dark brown, almost black, and the told doctors this was more serious than they thought. Then I heard a doctor say something I never should have heard, “She’s dying.”
Within minutes I was being rushed to ICU. By this point, I had become somewhat disoriented. However, I knew enough to pick my chart up off my stretcher as we were going to ICU to see what my admitting diagnosis was. And there it was in big bold letters. My beast. The ugly beast that reared its head and was killing me that night. SEPTIC SHOCK. I knew what this was.
I had worked in medical malpractice defense law firms for 15 years. This was not good. And I knew it. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. How did I get sepsis to begin with? And how did I have it bad enough that my body had gone into septic shock?
My body was poisoning itself to death. My organs had started shutting down. My kidneys obviously were on the list since my urine was almost black. My heart rate skyrocketed trying to keep up with my body. My fever was over 105. My blood pressure dropped to dangerously low numbers. My gallbladder all but quit. My digestive system went haywire, and my head hurt so badly that it felt like someone was swinging a baseball bat against the back of my skull. No pain meds were helping. I just hurt, badly! I was swollen from all the fluids they were pumping in me. I couldn’t breathe. I became agitated and confused. I had so many wires and monitors hooked up to me in ICU. My veins collapsed from the dehydration to the point that I had to have a port put into a major vein in my arm. It was bad. I was dying. And I knew it.
They could not figure out what was wrong. I had some type of infection, but my body was rejecting any type of antibiotic treatments. It was not looking good for me. The survival rate for septic shock is not very good, especially if it gets to where I was. I was hopped up on so many medications for everything that I just really didn’t know what was going on. The first several days in the ICU are a fog to me. About day 5 in the ICU, my body finally started reacting to antibiotic treatment but, I wholeheartedly think that was because of the prayer I said as I laid there. I was so sick I wanted to die but, I also didn’t want to leave my kids behinds. I just prayed, “Father, hold me.”
The doctors and nurses said they couldn’t explain it. They had already told my husband that I wouldn’t live through the night and I closed my eyes to die when I whispered that prayer. I just remember my room lighting up with a peaceful bright and wonderful white light. I felt like I was being picked up and held in someone’s lap. This is about the time my body started reacting to the last course of antibiotics. My heart rate started to come down and my blood pressure came back up. I look at it as I am a walking talking MIRACLE!
I spent a week in the ICU and another week in the step-down unit before I finally got to go home. My discharge diagnosis: Ehrlichiosis (a tick born illness). They are not 100% sure that was the culprit. Possibly a UTI was behind it as well.
I spent two months at home unable to work or do much of anything, I was eventually able to get back in the swing of things somewhat. There are post-sepsis residuals. As time has gone on, I still have traumatic effects from it both physically and mentally. As a result, I have Post-Sepsis Syndrome, Complex PTSD, anxiety, depression, exhaustion, chronic nerve and muscle pain, a cognitive disorder, a heart problem, an immune deficiency, Occipital Neuralgia headaches, and facial paralysis sometimes.
I knew I had hundreds of prayers going up for me the entire time. I have amazing prayer warrior friends. I had people praying for me that I didn’t even know! I am thankful for that. I am so very thankful to be alive and to have beaten the odds stacked against me that night. This beast has made me have a passion for those who have survived the illness as well as the caretakers and families of those who were not so lucky.