My Near Death Experience #SafeSpace

I’ve been chronically ill my entire life but it wasn’t until

16 that things became really serious. By the time I was 18 I was basically living in the hospital to receive IV medication, fluids, and nutrition as I couldn’t sustain myself at all at home. It was at this point they decided a central line (basically a really big IV that goes directly into a large vein in your heart as an expedited way to get things into the body intravenously) was necessary. They started out with a PICC line, which goes in your upper arm, and I was doing well with that so they wanted to switch to a port which is implanted under the skin of the upper chest and is much more permanent. However my surgeon must not have taken all the right precautions during my surgery and my port immediately got infected and the bacteria made its way through the catheter of my port into my blood causing sepsis. I immediately recognized the symptoms and rushed to the ER. Unfortunately I was assigned a team of very arrogant and ignorant doctors who did not take me seriously at all and sent me home even after samples of my blood began growing a very dangerous bacteria known as MRSA. They were aware of this and still thought they could call me an attention seeker and dismiss me. If they had begun treatment at that point I probably would’ve only been in the hospital a week and sent home on 6 weeks of antibiotics because my chances of survival would’ve been around 80-90%. However they sent me home basically to die and was brought back via ambulance 2 days later where they did scans showing that the bacteria had spread through my body significantly and my organs were shutting down. I don’t really remember anything from this point to maybe a month later but apparently I was not expected to pull through and my chance of survival was less than 20%. I dealt with severe pain and weakness, awful side effects of the antibiotics, constant nausea and vomiting to the point where I had to be fed through an IV and was heavily medicated most of the time. I lost around 30 pounds over the 3 months I was there and I also lost several friends after realizing they didn’t care enough about me to even come visit. After 3 torturous months in the hospital I FINALLY got a case worker who was able to arrange a transfer for me to go to a skilled nursing facility (the kind of place where they take care of people with severe traumatic brain injuries and quadriplegics). It was a much more relaxing and calm environment where I could have my own sheets and clothes and just much more like home but with registered nurses there 24/7 to also take care of you.

I’m left with a lot of trauma from this event and the lingering effects are an everyday reminder of what I went through but I’m so grateful to be here and to be alive.

#safespace #lemon8challenge #chronicillnessfighter #illness & death #embracevulnerability