I had gone from having some aching in my suprapubic area to full-blown sepsis. This had happened over the course of less than 24 hours. The day I went to the hospital, I made it halfway through the day. Then suddenly I felt like I was in Antarctica. The chills were so bad that they invaded even the marrow of my bones. In the middle of an online monopoly I terrified Jeff by passing out. He had no choice but to call 911.

The paramedics called me in as a sepsis code and brought me straight to the trauma room. It took them hours to stabilize me in the trauma room . Finally they transferred me to the ICU. I had spent the last three of four days in the ICU zoning in and out of consciousness.

Unconditional Love in the ICU

Visiting hours in the ICU were very strict. Jeff told the hospital that he was my husband. That way he could come to visit me at any time of day.  He would sit on the edge of the bed and stroke my back. Sometimes I would be awake, sometimes I would be asleep, sometimes I would be in the land between the two. I battled hard and forced myself to respond to him. I didn’t want him to be scared. Sometimes though, my body just wouldn’t be strong enough. At those points, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get myself to move. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t get my eyes to open up enough to look into his. My brain wouldn’t even make the right connections to make mt hands squeeze his back. It did feel reassuring to have his big strong callousd hands, protecting mine.

“You can’t die on me Becca,” he kept saying.  Sometimes I saw tears in his eyes. I would struggle even harder to respond, but my body wouldn’t always allow it.

Kissing Through the ICU Spaghetti

Other times I would be able to somewhat break through the sleepy, foggy state. I would sit the bed up and take the plastic-scented oxygen mask, off. Then I would pucker my lips, so he knew to lean in and kiss me.  He always got the cue and would carefully bend over me. He would gently maneuver around all the tubes, wires, and monitors that the nurses jokingly called “ICU spaghetti” . Then he would kiss me until I was out of breath. When the oxygen monitor started alarming that my levels were too low. He would replace the oxygen mask on my face and rub my shoulders. Then, no matter how much I tried to fight it, I would sink back into my foggy zone.

Leaving the ICU

After five days in the ICU, they finally got me on the right IV antibiotics. My fever went down from around 105 to about 100 to 101 F.  Instead of taking IV Tylenol every six hours, I started taking liquid Children’s Tyelnol every six hours. The liquid Tyelonl I took through my J tube instead. Slowly they were able to wean me down from the non-rebreather oxygen mask at 10 L per minute. I got all the way down to the high-flow nasal cannula at 5 L per minute.

“Hey look, you only have two comforters on and your not shivering or freezing cold anymore,” Jeff pointed out. He noticed this the day before I left the ICU to go to the regular medical floor.

“You’re right,” I told Jeff as he smiled his cute little infectious smile at me. For the first time in days, the special little sparkle in his hazel eyes had returned. Somewhere along the way he lost that little sparkle by visiting me every day in the ICU. Now that I was no longer swinging back and forth between life and death he found it again.

Three Weeks of IV Antibiotics Ahead

I hadn’t noticed it until he pointed it out, but I no longer felt that chilled-down-to-my-very-bone-marrow-feeling invading my entire body. The uncontrollable shivering and teeth chattering had been happening for over a week. It started a few hours before I went to the hospital. Then it lasted all the way through my entire ICU stay. Now it had finally stopped.

The next day I was transferred from the ICU to a regular medical floor. The same infectious disease doctor I’d had in the ICU took care of me on the regular medical floor too.

“You’re going to need to continue the IV antibiotics for about three weeks once you go home to make sure we really get rid of this infection,” he told me.

Too High a Pain Tolerance

“How did my UTI go septic so fast?” I asked.

“You probably actually had a UTI that you didn;t notice or treat for awhile. Because you are so used chronic pain, by the time you noticed your UTI symptoms, it was too late. The infection sat in your urethra and bladder and festered before leaking into your bloodstream. Once an infection burrows into your bloodstream, bacteremia occurs. Bactermia means that your blood cultures start coming back positive. Once you develop bacteria, it takes almost nothing, to turn it into sepsis,” The doctor explained.

Using the PICC Line From The ICU

After two days on the general medical floor, I was able to go home. When I went home I had my normal port in my chest that I always had. It was hooked up to my normal maintenance IV bag, It had, salt water, sugar water, potassium , magnesium, multivitamins, and trace elements in it. It ran 24/7 at 75 ml an hour and we changed the bags every morning. Plus I had my splitter tubing on it. The splitter tubing was special thing that turned a single lumen into a double lumen. It allowed me to run a second bag of normal saline at the same time as the other bag. The normal saline also ran 24/7. It ran at 100 ml an hour. However, I was also going home with a double lumen PICC line.

When I left the ICU they had removed the triple-lumen central line in my neck. However they had also placed a double-lumen PICC line in my arm. The PICC line was for the IV antibiotics that I would be on for the next three weeks. I didn’t have enough IV access otherwise. My port was a single lumen and both lines of the splitter were used up.

Avoiding the Unavoidable Urosepsis ICU Trips

I swore to myself that I would be extra careful from now on when catheterizing myself. My body couldn’t handle another close call with another UTI going septic like that.

“We really didn’t know if we were going to see you go home from this visit.” One of the doctors on the medical floor told me. As the nurses’ aide was helping me pack up my belongings to get ready for discharge. “The more times you go septic the higher the risk of death goes.”

The thing was sometimes a UTI is just unavoidable in a patient using catheters, and I didn’t always feel them until too late..