how an insignificant scratch lead to sepsis
Discussion
Just a heads up , walking the dogs in the new forest several weeks back , wearing hunting style wellington boots with low trainer style socks , lead to a small abrasion on my right calf ,
I ignored this , roll on to day 4 in the morning and feeling not quite right , slight flu like systems ( wife had recently had flu) so dismissed as probably caught it ,
by evening time was feeling much worse , symptoms were violently shaking feeling cold , sweating , breathing rapidly and raised heart rate ( was wearing fitbit ) , temperature was below normal .36c
cursed the missus for giving me her flu and went to bed 9pm , by 11:00 pm shaking and shivering was so bad realised this was not normal flu, also back was giving me jip , wife took temperature slightly below 36c and was now confused , couldn't remember what day it was , wife called 111 , Ambulance crew came out and took vitals , which were all over the place , right leg was starting to swell and going pinkish around calf ,
by this stage i couldn't think , and was in a lot of pain in my lower back and leg , ambulance crew administered low dose of morphine and was rushed into Bournemouth hospital , by this stage lower calf was now bright red hot and swelling, sweating profusely , blood tests revealed cellulitis with sepsis put on intravenous drips and intravenous antibiotics , in all had superb treatment from the staff . 5 days in AMU and recovery wards , and 38 courses of antibiotic treatment , now nearly back to normal , side effects were dizziness and feeling thoroughly worn out , been a shake up to not ignore minor cuts and abraisions , fairly certain the cause was water borne bacteria from the forest getting into the abrasion .
I ignored this , roll on to day 4 in the morning and feeling not quite right , slight flu like systems ( wife had recently had flu) so dismissed as probably caught it ,
by evening time was feeling much worse , symptoms were violently shaking feeling cold , sweating , breathing rapidly and raised heart rate ( was wearing fitbit ) , temperature was below normal .36c
cursed the missus for giving me her flu and went to bed 9pm , by 11:00 pm shaking and shivering was so bad realised this was not normal flu, also back was giving me jip , wife took temperature slightly below 36c and was now confused , couldn't remember what day it was , wife called 111 , Ambulance crew came out and took vitals , which were all over the place , right leg was starting to swell and going pinkish around calf ,
by this stage i couldn't think , and was in a lot of pain in my lower back and leg , ambulance crew administered low dose of morphine and was rushed into Bournemouth hospital , by this stage lower calf was now bright red hot and swelling, sweating profusely , blood tests revealed cellulitis with sepsis put on intravenous drips and intravenous antibiotics , in all had superb treatment from the staff . 5 days in AMU and recovery wards , and 38 courses of antibiotic treatment , now nearly back to normal , side effects were dizziness and feeling thoroughly worn out , been a shake up to not ignore minor cuts and abraisions , fairly certain the cause was water borne bacteria from the forest getting into the abrasion .
t life must have been without antibiotics?A good friend of mine (in his early 30's fit and healthy guy) scraped his foot on a rock in the sea whilst on holiday a couple of years back. Was the smallest most insignificant scratch (wouldn't even go as far to call it a cut). He had only been back in the UK a few hours before being rushed to A&E with sepsis. Unfortunately he wasn't as lucky as you and died two weeks later.
It was the first real experience/knowledge I had of sepsis and what a beast it can be. A massive eyeopener at the time. Beginning of 2020 my 18 month old daughter was taken to A&E on the advice of a doctor to get checked for sepsis. He didn't think she had it but wanted to rule it out 100% - ended up just being a nasty chest infection but after what happened to my friend it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life!
Glad to hear you're on the mend and obviously caught it in time.
It was the first real experience/knowledge I had of sepsis and what a beast it can be. A massive eyeopener at the time. Beginning of 2020 my 18 month old daughter was taken to A&E on the advice of a doctor to get checked for sepsis. He didn't think she had it but wanted to rule it out 100% - ended up just being a nasty chest infection but after what happened to my friend it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life!
Glad to hear you're on the mend and obviously caught it in time.
A good friend of mine was about an hour away from the pearly gates having had a spell in his finger. His thumb swelled up very abnornally I urged him to go to the docs. Thumb swell after about 3/4 days turned into arm swell and not feeling well he was rushed to hospital from the doctors surgery and was gravely ill. Apparently the infection was a couple of inches from lymph nodes in his underarm at which point he would probably have died. He was very lucky. I think his immune system was possibly a bit low at the time he was run down from working all hours.
It is really interesting just how dangerous a scratch can be. It really makes me think as I run and ride my bike in the forest a lot. I get scratched regularly and bitten by insects including ticks also.
For whatever reason I‘ve not had a problem.
I suspect either I'm just lucky or you need a combination of internal and external factors to pick nasty stuff up.
Thanks to the OP for the heads up. Very pleased for you too!
For whatever reason I‘ve not had a problem.
I suspect either I'm just lucky or you need a combination of internal and external factors to pick nasty stuff up.
Thanks to the OP for the heads up. Very pleased for you too!
We lead modern mollycoddled and sanitary lives, and as kids don't play at the rec, on rubbish tips, or in the street like we used too.
Falling over, cuts, bruises, and scabs the size of saucers that lasted a year were commonplace in the good old days, as was our exposure to numerous bugs that lived on, in and around us.
Kids now don't 'play' at all as far as I can see, or if they do it's in someone's sanitised house on an xbox or phone.
The rough and tumble of life and learning has disappeared to be replaced by risk averse virtual reality, facebook groups and occasional gang stabbings.
Most of our manual industries have gone and so have workers with tough gnarly hands, missing digits, and no fingerprints to speak of.
Worn away by hard work, long hours and minor industrial injuries.
It's 9-5 aircon sanitised offices now, but sadly jabbing away at computer keyboards and making lattes doesn't toughen up your immune system.
Exposure to bugs is limited, and we are all fixated with products that guarantee to kill 99.9% of all germs in our hermetically sealed homes.
It's the 0.1% these products don't kill we should probably be more worried about.
Back in the day your mum used 'Pledge' or beeswax on anything in the home that wasn't nailed down,
it didn't kill anything but just glued the bugs to the thinly veneered cheap sideboard so they could lay in wait for you.
There were no sanitising hand gels, non biodegradable wipes or other nonsense, there was a big block of green soap with more fissures than the Grand Canyon welded to the sink in a sludge of its own goo. If you didn't wash your hands properly after playing outside, going to the loo or working on the car then you ingested dirt, poo, sump oil and whatever else you had picked up that day. It didn't kill you, they were like old friends your body was used too.
Limited or zero exposure to bugs nowadays means no resistance. That's a fact of modern comfortable cosseted life
The clever Dr Jenner worked that out in 1798 when he started giving people cowpox from milkmaids to see if that protected them from smallpox.
After a mild dose of the pox (like scuffing your knee on the concrete under the children's 1970's slides) they didn't get the deadly version from an A4 paper cut when trying to load the Lexmark printer..
Consequently nowadays when you prick your finger in the woods on your annual post xmas family nature walk the grey curtains close around.
The one enfeebled white cell on duty in your blood is on it's rest day or back in the liver trying to digest yesterday's turkey.
With exposure to coronavirus or the rusty nail on the shed, the ones with active and aggressive immune systems will likely survive unaided..
Pale and pasty desk jockeys who haven't skinned their knuckles on rusty cars, worn away their knees on wooden go karts or jabbed themselves with all manner of items from school compasses to copydex covered rusty scissors just haven't acquired the immunity they need.
It will take a lot of effort to right this general weakening of our human physical side in 1st world countries. Fitness, obesity, antibiotic misuse etc etc.
It's probably in the less modern and affluent societies where dirt and grime still go hand in hand that people will survive a modern plague.
Once our limited western armouroy of antibiotics etc is exhausted it's game over when there are no power ups left for your phagocytes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunity_(medical)
Falling over, cuts, bruises, and scabs the size of saucers that lasted a year were commonplace in the good old days, as was our exposure to numerous bugs that lived on, in and around us.
Kids now don't 'play' at all as far as I can see, or if they do it's in someone's sanitised house on an xbox or phone.
The rough and tumble of life and learning has disappeared to be replaced by risk averse virtual reality, facebook groups and occasional gang stabbings.
Most of our manual industries have gone and so have workers with tough gnarly hands, missing digits, and no fingerprints to speak of.
Worn away by hard work, long hours and minor industrial injuries.
It's 9-5 aircon sanitised offices now, but sadly jabbing away at computer keyboards and making lattes doesn't toughen up your immune system.
Exposure to bugs is limited, and we are all fixated with products that guarantee to kill 99.9% of all germs in our hermetically sealed homes.
It's the 0.1% these products don't kill we should probably be more worried about.
Back in the day your mum used 'Pledge' or beeswax on anything in the home that wasn't nailed down,
it didn't kill anything but just glued the bugs to the thinly veneered cheap sideboard so they could lay in wait for you.
There were no sanitising hand gels, non biodegradable wipes or other nonsense, there was a big block of green soap with more fissures than the Grand Canyon welded to the sink in a sludge of its own goo. If you didn't wash your hands properly after playing outside, going to the loo or working on the car then you ingested dirt, poo, sump oil and whatever else you had picked up that day. It didn't kill you, they were like old friends your body was used too.
Limited or zero exposure to bugs nowadays means no resistance. That's a fact of modern comfortable cosseted life
The clever Dr Jenner worked that out in 1798 when he started giving people cowpox from milkmaids to see if that protected them from smallpox.
After a mild dose of the pox (like scuffing your knee on the concrete under the children's 1970's slides) they didn't get the deadly version from an A4 paper cut when trying to load the Lexmark printer..
Consequently nowadays when you prick your finger in the woods on your annual post xmas family nature walk the grey curtains close around.
The one enfeebled white cell on duty in your blood is on it's rest day or back in the liver trying to digest yesterday's turkey.
With exposure to coronavirus or the rusty nail on the shed, the ones with active and aggressive immune systems will likely survive unaided..
Pale and pasty desk jockeys who haven't skinned their knuckles on rusty cars, worn away their knees on wooden go karts or jabbed themselves with all manner of items from school compasses to copydex covered rusty scissors just haven't acquired the immunity they need.
It will take a lot of effort to right this general weakening of our human physical side in 1st world countries. Fitness, obesity, antibiotic misuse etc etc.
It's probably in the less modern and affluent societies where dirt and grime still go hand in hand that people will survive a modern plague.
Once our limited western armouroy of antibiotics etc is exhausted it's game over when there are no power ups left for your phagocytes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunity_(medical)
This thread is bizarre, timings wise.
Two weeks ago my lovely Mum had a fever and a pain in her arm. She went to see a doctor as the pain was severe enough to make her think she was having a heart attack. Within four hours her arm was in such a state that she has unfortunately had to have it amputated. Originally they told us it was 50/50 whether she would make it so we actually feel lucky at the moment that she is still with us.
The odds are astonishingly small but I think a fever, pain and an obvious infection would now have me going to A and E to be checked over. Every minute helps.
To the poster above - this isn't about a sanitised lifestyle. I think you just hear about these things more now as communication is easier.
Two weeks ago my lovely Mum had a fever and a pain in her arm. She went to see a doctor as the pain was severe enough to make her think she was having a heart attack. Within four hours her arm was in such a state that she has unfortunately had to have it amputated. Originally they told us it was 50/50 whether she would make it so we actually feel lucky at the moment that she is still with us.
The odds are astonishingly small but I think a fever, pain and an obvious infection would now have me going to A and E to be checked over. Every minute helps.
To the poster above - this isn't about a sanitised lifestyle. I think you just hear about these things more now as communication is easier.
My ex had sepsis, we were in a hotel in the Midlands, me, her, her young daughter, she'd been flu like ill for a couple of days, eventually she got much worse and I tried to work out what was wrong with her, I had an initial thought of sepsis, and wanted to get her an ambulance but she wouldn't have it as her daughter was up here (they're from down south) so she wanted her daughter back there with family instead of up here, fair enough.
We packed her stuff up and I drove her down to family, as I was sat on the coach back up from London I was speaking to her sister about how she was, it transpired she was rushed into hospital against her will (very stubborn, like me) and was told had she been left for another 12 hours she may not have lived.
I didn't hear the last of how grateful her sister and mother were for me driving her back, I'm just so happy she was still alive for her kids.
Her attitude has also now changed regarding listening to people for her best interests, when she was rushed into hospital she wasn't coherent, in a very bad way, and was in for a few days.
She feels she's very lucky, and she really is.
We packed her stuff up and I drove her down to family, as I was sat on the coach back up from London I was speaking to her sister about how she was, it transpired she was rushed into hospital against her will (very stubborn, like me) and was told had she been left for another 12 hours she may not have lived.
I didn't hear the last of how grateful her sister and mother were for me driving her back, I'm just so happy she was still alive for her kids.
Her attitude has also now changed regarding listening to people for her best interests, when she was rushed into hospital she wasn't coherent, in a very bad way, and was in for a few days.
She feels she's very lucky, and she really is.
Kawasicki said:
It is really interesting just how dangerous a scratch can be.!
Think in terms of your skin being a protective covering. Any opening, ANY opening can let bacteria in. So for instance if you're diabetic and forget to swab the injection area first the needle can push bacteria on the outside in and hey presto... .Edited by popeyewhite on Monday 10th February 10:45
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