Glasgow woman had to learn to walk again after sepsis terror

The 41-year-old believes she owes her life to a team of off-duty doctors and nurses who drove through the night with the specialist equipment she needed to survive.

“I will forever be grateful to them,” she says. “I am one of the luckiest people in the world.”

Suzanne is grateful to the NHS team who saved her life (Image: Suzanne Graham)

Suzanne, who works for NHS Education, is sharing her story ahead of World Sepsis Day on September 13.

Around five people die every hour from sepsis in the UK and worldwide, sepsis takes more lives per year than breast, bowel and prostate cancer combined.

Sepsis Research FEAT is the only UK charity fundraising to support research to help find improved treatments for sepsis, while also working to raise awareness.

For Suzanne, the drama began five years ago when she caught a cold in the run-up to Christmas. By December 28, she was struggling to breathe and talk, so she made an appointment with her GP.

“My husband Neil drove me to the surgery,” she recalls. “The GP measured my blood oxygen and listened to my chest. I remember her saying ‘I don’t want to alarm you, but I will be calling an ambulance.’

“My blood oxygen was around 80% but I had no idea how serious this was. I remember perhaps the first few minutes of the journey in the ambulance, but I don’t remember arriving at the hospital.

“Everything for the next 10 days is what people told me happened….”

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Suzanne was rushed into intensive care at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow where sepsis and Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome were diagnosed.

She was so ill, a ventilator was no longer enough, but the only equipment available to help her - an ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) machine, which pumps and oxygenates a patient's blood outside the body, allowing the heart and lungs to rest - was in Aberdeen.

Suzanne is sharing her story to help others (Image: Suzanne Graham)

Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, the only place in Scotland that provides an adult ECMO service, sent a team to Glasgow with the machine.

“Two doctors and three nurses, none of whom had been working when the call came in, gave up their time to save me,” says Suzanne.

Eventually, Suzanne came off ECMO on December 31, and she was transferred from ICU to the High Dependency Unit.

She spent three weeks in hospital. “I basically had to learn to walk again as my muscles had wasted away,” she says. “I received the most amazing care from the NHS and can’t thank everyone enough.

“I thought sepsis was bacteria in the blood, but since going through this experience, I realise it is much more complicated than that. Despite having a PhD in immunology, I still don’t really understand it.

“I am extremely grateful that I fully survived sepsis, I know many others are not as lucky.”

Suzanne is hoping by raising awareness of sepsis, which many people associate simply with infected cuts, more lives will be saved.

The five key symptoms of sepsis are confusion, not passing as much urine as normal, very high or low temperature, uncontrolled shivering and cold or blotchy arms and legs.

“I am thankful every day for the NHS and my family,” says Suzanne. “When the little things in life feel like they are taking over, I remind myself what we’ve all been through and this helps to identify what’s really important.”