'Don’t be afraid to ask': Limerick mother recounts her son's experience of sepsis
Ago From University Hse Photo: For Sepsis Hospital Two Yvonne A Limerick Treated Was Whose At Mother Limerick Years Young, Son
Have no regrets and always ask for help if you suspect sepsis. That's the advice from a Limerick mother whose son had a “really frightening” experience which started with a simple scratch.
The HSE National Sepsis Summit also heard sepsis patients accounted for 3% of hospital in-patients last year but 24.3% of total deaths. At the event in Dublin, Yvonne Young described how the scratch led to a frightening couple of days.
Flynn, 11, complained of pains at school and next morning, she said: "He was not able to walk on his legs". The local injury unit suspected a sports injury and gave him crutches.
“He slept all night again, he was so excited to go into school and show off the crutches,” she said. Instead, however, he stayed home exhausted, developing flu-like symptoms.
Ms Young, working from home, was alarmed due to her job as assistant director of nursing in sepsis at University Hospital Limerick. Arriving at the emergency department, she remembered: “When I came up to the desk, I said I think my son has sepsis and it was so hard I felt silly.”
She worried staff thought she was “a neurotic mother”, saying: “I can only imagine what it’s like for a member of the public (to say this)."
After being admitted, his symptoms worsened and she said: “He was talking absolute gobbledygook, it was really frightening to see a child like that.” Testing showed he had sepsis.
She said: “Thankfully the bug that was causing the sepsis was sensitive to an antibiotic." It still took 72 hours before he began to recover.
Flynn has eczema and a scratch had become infected before healing. Being unwell had separately caused a sports injury to get worse.
Ms Young urged:
Between 2020 and 2023 there were 117 deaths among children from sepsis with 2,891 cases. However, rates increase with age and among people who also have other conditions, according to Dr Michael O’ Dwyer, Clinical Lead at the HSE Sepsis Programme.
“Overwhelmingly the group that are most prone to this are the elderly, such that about 70% of patients that we treat with sepsis are above 75 years old,” he said. He added for this group “your chances of dying are very, very high".
He acknowledged the “tragic and avoidable” maternal death of Savita Halappanavar in 2013 which led to improvements in sepsis care. Last year, 260 pregnant women developed sepsis, without any deaths.
Dr Cliona Murphy, clinical director with the National Women and Infants Health Programme, shared images of Tania McCabe, Karen McEvoy and Ms Halappanavar during her presentation.
“I’ve put these ladies’ pictures up here to remind us they’re not just cases, and that behind every case of maternal mortality is an affected family, and people that we’ve lost who should have had ongoing, healthy lives,” she said.
She welcomed increased awareness of sepsis but said: “Maternal sepsis can be avoided if there is appropriate and rapid intervention." She highlighted UK studies on maternal deaths linked to sepsis.
“This information is really important if we are having risk-benefit discussions with women," she said. "And I would say probably up to now the tendency was more to talk about the chance of the baby’s survival more than the risk to the women."