rivers2cross

If I knew little about bowel cancer before Mum was diagnosed in 2016, then I knew even less about sepsis when it struck at the heart of our family in 2009. To be honest I’d never heard of it. Dad was 81 and amazingly fit for his age. He was still working with me every day in the family business he formed in 1976.

2009 was a year to forget. On my birthday on February 21st, I got a phone call from Mum saying that Dad had fallen over and we had to take him to hospital. He had suffered a mini stroke. Although he recovered well from this, it had left him more tired and when pneumonia and then sepsis struck a few months later he had nothing left in the tank to fight it.

It all happened so quickly in the June. He came down poorly on Monday 8th and was admitted to hospital on the Wednesday. As a family we all stayed with Mum from that point on and having to ring my sister to explain the situation that Wednesday night was as hard as life has got for me. Dad was put into an induced coma to try and help him fight the illness, and sadly we never got to speak with him or saw him conscious again. Time was a luxury we never had. By the Saturday we were called into hospital to be told just how perilous his situation was and a bit about how the sepsis was attacking his organs and that we needed to prepare for the worst. That worst came on Monday June 15th, early morning, when Dad quietly slipped away.

I see sepsis mentioned on a regular basis, especially by people who have been in hospital with bowel cancer. Sepsis really is such a potentially serious and life-threatening illness, and I always am reminded of Dad when I see sepsis mentioned, and so I am always so grateful to see people coming through it. But please don’t dismiss or underestimate sepsis! My love to anyone who has had sepsis or been affected by it x