The scariest moment of my life is when I was in the hospital. The brink of death is a scary place to be. It is especially scary for someone with sepsis like I had. With a fever of 106, organs failing, and delusional, who wouldn’t be frightened? It was truly the worst experience of my life.

At first, it seemed like it was going to be a normal infection where I take some medicine and it’s done. My mom left me alone for 2 hours to get some medicine and some other things at a store, and my fever had jumped from 99 to 105. This is when the delusions and hallucinations began. She had me get into a freezing cold tub of water to cool me down, and called the doctor. We went to the doctor’s office and during the 20 minute drive, my fever climbed up to 106. When we got to the doctor’s office, just by looking at me, the doctor knew I was septic. He gave me an IV of a heavy duty antibiotic, and 3 bags of fluids to save my kidneys. He told my mom and me to go to the nearest emergency room.

My memory from this point on isn’t the best, most of the time I was passed out. When we got to the ER, they put in an A-line. They had to put in an IV to pump in medications. They put it in a vein in my neck instead of one in my arm or hand because they had to give me a lot of medicines. If they had pumped all the medications into a smaller one, they would have destroyed the vein. This is where the delusions and hallucinations get horrible. They may not have ever been chasing purple dragons through the woods, but I would have much preferred the original ones.

Eventually I began improving. After about 2 and a half weeks in the ICU, I was able to go to a normal room. The one in the ICU was much larger and nicer. There were still some problems though. One was that I couldn’t keep any solid food down, or get it down in some cases. The other main one was that I didn’t have enough strength to walk because I hadn’t used my legs for a while. But with time and physical therapy, I was back to me again. Having sepsis was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I am so glad it is over.