Article originally published Fall 2024 in The Monitor magazine.
Surviving Sepsis – A Family’s Journey
As one of the most underrecognized and misdiagnosed conditions in the world, sepsis can sneak in quietly and wreak havoc quickly – a reality that John Sharp and his son, Jay Sharp, of Lancaster, know all too well. Hospitalized with sepsis two years apart – Jay in 2022 and John in 2024 – both men were completely unaware that anything was wrong with them until they were suddenly hit with severe, incapacitating symptoms that landed them in the Emergency Department. “For me, only two to three hours had passed between the time I started to feel unwell and my arrival at the hospital,” said Jay, 52. “It escalated that quickly.”
Sepsis is the body’s extreme reaction to an infection and is most common with lung, urinary tract, abdominal and skin infections. It can happen to anyone, especially adults older than 60, children younger than one and individuals with chronic conditions. Symptoms of sepsis can escalate quickly and cause septic shock, which can seriously damage the internal organs and even lead to death. The sepsis mortality rate is greater than that of a heart attack, stroke or trauma, and it increases with every hour appropriate treatment is delayed.
With more than 450 cases of sepsis diagnosed at FMC every year and 48.9 million worldwide, John and Jay are hoping to raise awareness about the condition that almost took their lives. While they remember only bits and pieces of their experience, their wives – Kellie Sharp and Linda Sharp – will never forget the fear of watching their husbands go from perfectly fine to severely ill in the blink of an eye. “It’s a difficult thing to talk about, but if we can save one person by sharing our stories, it will be worth it,” John, 79, said.
JAY’S STORY
On a November day in 2022, Jay and his wife, Kellie, loaded their truck and started to head up north for an anniversary trip. Jay had woken up that morning with flu-like symptoms – aching joints and a headache – but decided to press forward. However, about an hour into their trip, it was apparent that Jay was dangerously ill and unable to keep driving.
“I was shaking uncontrollably; I wasn’t cold or anything, I just couldn’t stop shaking,” Jay said.
Kellie urged Jay to pull over on the side of the road, where he laid down in the bed of the truck. In addition to the shaking, Jay was disoriented and experiencing severe pain in his back. With the closest hospital less than a mile away, Kellie rushed Jay to the Emergency Department.
Following a flurry of tests, including an EKG and a CT scan, medical personnel ruled out a heart attack, but began to suspect that Jay might have pneumonia. As his health continued to deteriorate, the decision was made to admit Jay – but Kellie had other plans.
“At that point, I was already making arrangements to transport him to Fairfield Medical Center,” said Kellie, who works at FMC in the Human Resources Department. “For me and my family, Fairfield Medical Center is truly the care we trust. It’s our physicians, it’s all of our providers, and we know when we walk in the doors there, we’re going to get the best care. And so for me, I needed to get my husband where that could happen.”
Within 20 minutes, the transfer had been arranged and Jay, who also works at FMC in Plant Engineering, was en route to Lancaster with Kellie following close behind.
“When he got to FMC was when I actually found out that he had sepsis,” Kellie said. “It was FMC that diagnosed him.”
Jay’s care team confirmed it was pneumonia that had caused the sepsis, which came as a surprise to Kellie and Jay. “I had no idea I was sick with pneumonia – I didn’t even have a cough,” Jay said.
Kellie added that the only difference she had noticed in Jay in the days prior to his sepsis diagnosis was fatigue. “He had worked that entire weekend and had been on call, so I thought he was just tired from working all of those hours,” she said.
Despite the severity of Jay’s diagnosis, he ended up spending only two days in the hospital, where he was treated with antibiotics. Once discharged, it took several weeks for him to regain his stamina and strength. He has since made a full recovery.
Kellie said she has no doubt that transferring Jay to FMC was the right decision. “When Jay was transferred from the Emergency Department to Medical Observation, nurse Angie McAfee came up to me and said, ‘I have your husband. I want you to go sit down and take care of yourself for a few minutes,’” Kellie said. “Our facility just feels like home, and I knew without a doubt that he would get the absolute best care there, which he did.”
John’s Story
At 79 years old, John Sharp has a lot of energy and can easily forget to take breaks when he’s immersed in a project. That’s what happened on Friday, April 18, as he was taking advantage of the warm weather to work in his backyard.
“I wasn’t drinking water as much as I should have, and when I came inside, I drank three bottles,” John said. “I was extremely thirsty – and then I got cold and started shaking.”
John piled on several layers of clothing and went onto the enclosed porch to warm up, but the shaking continued. His wife, Linda, became concerned and immediately called Kellie and her daughter, Kayla, a nursing student. After helping John remove his layers, Kayla took his vitals and noted that he had a slight fever.
“We figured the temperature was attributed to the fact that he had been working outside all day and had then bundled up when he came in,” Kellie said. “I had seen sepsis shakes with Jay, but that’s not what it looked like with John.”
John took some over-the-counter medication, which helped lower his temperature and alleviate the back pain. By Saturday, he was feeling better. On Sunday, he was back outside working in the yard. “It was another hot day, so when I was done, I went inside to get a drink and I started to get cold again,” John said. “I went to bed and started to feel worse, so we called Kellie and Kayla back over.”
Kellie said she immediately felt like something wasn’t right this time. John was complaining of back pain, had a fever of 103 and was vomiting up water. “I asked him if I could take him to the hospital, and he said ‘yes’,” Kellie said. “This is a man who is never sick, who probably hasn’t been to the hospital since the 1980s. So, when he said yes, I knew it was serious.”
Kellie hurried back to her house to grab her purse and call Jay at work. She returned to find that John’s condition had rapidly deteriorated in the few minutes that she had been gone. “Linda was trying to sit him up, and he couldn’t do it,” she said. “He couldn’t coordinate his feet into his slippers. Linda asked if I needed help getting him to the car, and I said, ‘No, we’re calling the squad.’”
By the time emergency personnel arrived on the scene, John’s speech was slurred and he was disoriented. John was rushed to FMC, where a CT scan revealed that his kidney had ruptured as the result of a kidney stone. He was in septic shock, but his care team worked quickly to stabilize him so he could be transferred to The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center for emergency surgery.
“FMC acted very, very quickly to diagnose the sepsis, and they did a fantastic job of communicating with us every step of the way,” Kellie said.
John said while the memory of his hospital stay is very fuzzy, he does recall how the FMC staff went above and beyond to diagnose him and save his life. “I didn’t meet a person that I didn’t like,” John said. “Everybody went out of their way to help me. I wish the whole world was that way.”
Following a three-day stay at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center, John was discharged home, where his follow-up care was transferred to Fairfield Healthcare Professionals Urology. While John’s recovery from sepsis was complicated with a bout of C.diff, he is doing better and is now less hesitant to brush off any unusual symptoms he experiences.
“I just thought my symptoms were going to go away, but they didn’t,” John said. “I now have a lot more intention of following up right away and not waiting till tomorrow or the next day.”
Learn more about Fairfield Medical Center’s Sepsis Care Service
