Welcome to Words Of Sepsis, the podcast from Sepsis Research FEAT to mark Sepsis Awareness Month 2022.

In this episode you'll hear from Kim. She was on holiday in Spain when she developed back pain. She thought she had a urine infection and even with trips to the hospital and doctors her condition deteriorated.

In fact Kim was airlifted back to the UK where medical staff were amazed she was alive.

Kim's story is one of determination and courage as she spent months in hospital, first battling sepsis itself. And then in rehab after having her hands and legs amputated because of sepsis.

Sepsis is a condition that still takes the lives of some 50,000 people in the UK every year.

That's about five lives lost every hour.

Our hope is that through these podcasts, many more people will become aware of sepsis and that some of the loss and suffering related to sepsis can be prevented as you increase your knowledge and the knowledge of others.

Do check out all eight episodes in the series and share them as widely as you can using them to start conversations with friends and family about sepsis.

It could save a life possibly even your own.

If you've been affected by anything you've heard, or you'd like more information about the groundbreaking research into sepsis that the charity funds please do visit our website. www.sepsisresearch.org.uk, where you can also make a donation.

You'll be helping us to save lives today and fund research for tomorrow.

Abi Dawson

Hi, I'm Abi. And I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to these Sepsis Research FEAT, Words Of Sepsis podcasts. Over the course of eight episodes, we'll be talking to sepsis survivors and their families about their experiences of sepsis. Some of the stories you hear may be quite painful, many are uplifting. They are stories of shock, fear, sometimes loss, often courage, but also of hope.

Sepsis is a condition that still takes the lives of some 50,000 people in the UK every year. That's about five lives lost every hour. Our hope is that through these podcasts, many more people will become aware of sepsis and that some of the loss and suffering related to sepsis can be prevented as you increase your knowledge and the knowledge of others.

So do please listen, share these words of sepsis and help to raise awareness and save lives.

In this episode, you'll be hearing from Kim, who was on holiday in Spain when she began to feel unwell. As is so often the case at first, neither she nor her husband thought too much about it. Her life was to change beyond all recognition as a result.

Kim

We've been there a week or two and I felt like maybe I might have a urine infection. But what kind of really prompted it was I started to get pain on my left side, around by my waist, in my back. And I said, oh, gosh, I think I've got a urine infection and it's gone to my kidneys. So I said, I think, really because the pain is getting quite bad, we perhaps need to go to the hospital. I think even then I must have been feeling very unwell but not realised quite how unwell I was. For me to want to go to the hospital rather than just the local doctors, I think I must have thought it was something fairly serious. And I actually thought that the hospital would possibly speak a bit more language, the English language, would possibly ask more questions and hopefully get me sorted a bit quicker. I said in Spanish, "

Abi

But that was not the case. In fact, it would be a long time before Kim got home.

Kim

Six weeks I was in the Spanish hospital, in a coma. He'd gone home that morning. He'd phoned my family in the UK and told them. They frantically tried to get a flight. You're only allowed to visit three times a day. Once in the morning once, I think, at lunchtime, and then later in the afternoon and in the morning and the lunchtime one, you just look through what they described as a McDonald's drive through window. They can just see you. That's it. They can't come in and hold you or talk to you, well they could talk through a phone, but that was it. So in the afternoon they came in. One of my girls pulled the sheet back to hold my hand and my hands were already purple. Apparently they all gasped and my mum said, she's not going to make it. She's not going to make it. We need to switch the machines off and let her go. I'm glad they didn't, may I add! I'm glad I'm still here. But, yeah, my hands had turned purple within 24 hours of being in hospital, so it was pretty obvious that they were going to die. I don't know if they looked at my feet at that stage and my legs, my legs and feet had also turned and then they went black. The hospital in Spain had discussed about amputating out there. Apparently they'd taken me by ambulance down to Alicante somewhere and brought me back again, but nothing was done about the amputations there. And I'm really glad that they didn't because my daughter managed to find my travel insurance, luckily, on my iPad. They sent a German doctor over and he walked into the room and took one look at me and said to my husband, if I don't get her out of here today, she'll be dead in no time. He said, there's going to be a risk taking her in the air and bringing her back down. He said, but that risk is minor compared to leaving her here and he took me back to Luton Airport and then I was driven back to the hospital, obviously by ambulance. Milton King's Hospital, I believe saved my life. They got me out of the coma after three weeks of being back. My daughters were there to greet me. When I arrived back, they saw the trolley coming down the corridor with what looked like a body bag on it and they said, oh, that must be Mum and it was. They'd obviously kept me wrapped up. They took me into a room, got me all wired up to their machinery, and then called my daughters into their office and they said we're absolutely shocked at the state of your mum and we must say that the next 48 hours are critical, she might not make it. Gemma said, don't tell me that, she said, because they said that to us in Spain. And she's still here, she's still fighting, she's going to pull through, she's a fighter. They said that Spain had told them that I had a couple of black digits. Well, to me, black digits are maybe a couple of black fingers. My arms were black, never mind my hands. My arms, almost up to my elbows, probably an inch or two down from my elbow, was black with necrosis. I was extremely lucky because they were talking about amputating my arm just below my elbow on my right. The left I don't remember if they spoke about keeping the full length or not, but I do remember with the right, they spoke about it being possibly amputated right up almost to my elbow. I was extremely lucky because I obviously had very good surgeons. I then had to go to rehab to Roehampton. I was booked for 12 weeks and I had seven in rehab and absolutely smashed it in seven weeks and they said I could go home. From getting ill to actually getting back home home. I spent eight months altogether in hospital and then rehab. I couldn't wait to get home because although I was seeing the family, I missed home cooking, for one. But I missed my puppies, my dogs, my babies. I loved them and I missed my dogs. My eldest dog had died just before I fell ill and I'd forgotten about that. So that kind of upset me a little bit as well. But I wanted to get home and see my fur babies. When I walked in, they were so happy to see me. They hadn't forgotten me and it was so lovely.

Abi

Kim says getting sepsis has changed her life.

Kim

I actually believe that I was saved so that I would warn people. So I campaign daily. I do TikToks. I do Instagram, I've got a Facebook page called Kim's Chance. I post about sepsis all the time. I just think it's important that everybody knows what sepsis is. Now, on the telly, we occasionally get an advert that shows us what meningitis is and if you get that spots on the skin with the glass thing. People know about the FAST with a stroke. I think it's time that the government do an advert for sepsis as well. More training needs to be done. I work with my local hospital, helping train staff on sepsis, because my story of losing your limbs and surviving it is a very powerful story and I'm quite happy to tell anybody what happened to me. It's just absolutely the most important thing to get over to everybody. I had several symptoms, which were the cold hands and feet, confusion, extreme cold. I was shivering and wrapped in a blanket yet, I had a temperature, slurred speech. Another symptom is not peeing in 24 hours. But if you feel that, you feel really unwell and it's a little bit more than a normal, when you've got an infection, you need to ring 999, no doubt about it, 999 or get to the hospital urgently. When I get an infection, I do panic. I had an infection on the end of my stump where a bone kept poking out and I have had sepsis again, through a urine infection, again. I thought about it pretty quickly, started to feel unwell. I started to get the pain in my side again, where I got it before, and thought, no, this isn't right. Called 999. The ambulance crew came out, they were amazing. Immediately took me straight to hospital. Hospital were brilliant. They got me straight on a drip, straight on fluids and antibiotics and kept me in overnight. My levels were down the next day and they said, we're happy enough now to send you home with oral antibiotics. So, yeah, I panic, I do panic, but rightly so and I think everybody that's had sepsis panics when they get those symptoms again because we know what can happen. But with the right treatment, it's absolutely fine. Anytime I think anyone has got an infection I kind of jump on it. An amputee friend was in hospital with his leg. It looked to me like he's got cellulitis. His good leg, obviously not his prosthetic leg, and it looked as though he'd got cellulitis. And I said to him, that looks like cellulitis and like it's infected. You be very careful because you can get sepsis from that. So I said, look, I'm going to send you the leaflet. So I sent it to him. I said, if you've got any of those symptoms, you show them nurses and you demand they get you tested. And he said, Actually, I have. So the nurse came over and he told the nurse and she went, no, no, no you're fine, you're fine. He said, look, my friend is a quadruple amputee because of sepsis. She almost died. He said, she's told me that because I've got a couple of these symptoms, you need to test me right now. Look at this. He made her read the flyer that I sent him and they tested him and sure enough, he had sepsis. So he still says to this day and he tells everybody that I saved his life. Sepsis has changed my life, I think in a way for the better. I've done more things since I've had sepsis. I've jumped from an aeroplane, I've done a zip wire. I'm waiting to do the UK's largest zip wire in Wales with an amputee group, hopefully either later this year or next year. I've been rock climbing, so nothing will stop me now. I have no fear. I almost died. I used to be petrified of heights. Nothing seems to frighten me anymore. I'm not frightened of dying now. If I die, I die. That's it. So if I have my hand transplant and in the middle of it I die, then so be it. At least I tried. I've had a good life. I'm almost 61 and I've enjoyed my life and I'm not going to let anything from now on stop me.

Abi

You heard Kim say she's had sepsis a second time and that her doctor now keeps an eye out if she has any kind of infection. This is something that Professor Kenneth Baillie from the Genomics study is looking at, thanks to funding from Sepsis Research FEAT.

Professor Kenneth Baillie

We know there are people, often kids that present hospital with recurrent infections who have broken bits of their immune system. There's also in the broader population, something more subtle going on, which is that we've all evolved for really the whole of our evolution before we looked anything like we do now, in the face of infections and a constant battle against bugs that cause infections. The consequence of that is that some of us are resistant to some infections and susceptible to others. There are specific examples of that from genetic studies in other diseases that you can have a single change that makes you more resistant to, there's one that makes you resistant to HIV. So people are continually exposed to HIV never get infected because they have this genetic variant, but that exact same variant makes them more susceptible to another infection. And I think that's important when thinking about or when we're talking about studying genetics in Sepsis. We're not really looking for deficiencies, broken bits of immune system, we're looking for differences that might point your immune system one way, which might help you in some circumstances, but hinder you another. Of course, for that week when you're desperately sick on the intensive care unit with sepsis if we know that, then maybe we can point your immune system in another direction using drugs and promote your chances of surviving.

Abi

Kim's life is now unrecognisable after her experience of Sepsis. With huge courage, she's channelled her energy into campaigning tirelessly since her recovery to raise awareness of Sepsis UK wide and beyond.

Abi

We really hope that listening to his Words of Sepsis podcast has helped increase your awareness of Sepsis. Do checks out all eight episodes in the series and share them as widely as you can, using them to start conversations with friends and family about Sepsis. It could save a life, possibly even your own. If you've been affected by anything you've heard or you'd like more information about the groundbreaking research into Sepsis that the charity funds, please do visit our website website www.sepsisresearch.org. UK, where you can also make a donation. You'll be helping us to save lives today and fund research for tomorrow.

Abi Dawson

We really hope that listening to this Words Of Sepsis podcast has helped increase your awareness of sepsis. Do check out all eight episodes in the series and share them as widely as you can using them to start conversations with friends and family about sepsis. It could save a life, possibly even your own.

If you've been affected by anything you've heard, or you'd like more information about the groundbreaking research into sepsis that the charity funds please do visit our website. www.sepsisresearch.org.uk, where you can also make a donation.

You'll be helping us to save lives today and fund research for tomorrow.