COLUMBUS, Ohio — Koti Epperson nearly lost her son to sepsis. Now the family is working to help others avoid the same thing.
“I just assumed he had caught a virus at school and it would just need to run its course,” said Koti Epperson about her son Nash's battle with sepsis.
What You Need To Know
- Epperson family nearly lost son to sepsis in 2018
- After he recovered, the family became advocates for sepsis awareness
- Sepsis Alliance works to expand sepsis awareness
Epperson, an English professor, said on April 28, 2018, Nash was a healthy 6-year-old playing soccer earlier that morning. By the evening, he had nearly succumbed to sepsis.
“We took him to (Nationwide) Children's in Columbus. They did a blood draw, and a chest X-Ray, all of those things, and while we were waiting for those test results, he started to de-compensate pretty quickly,” said Epperson.
Epperson said her son stopped breathing, was in septic shock and needed to be intubated.
Nash was on a ventilator for 7 of the 14 days he spent at Nationwide Children's Hospital — fighting for his life.
During that time the Eppersons learned Nash's septic shock was caused by a strep infection in his blood. Until the day he became ill, he was asymptomatic of any infection.
But Nash is a survivor and in the past four years, the Eppersons have become advocates for families who have undergone a similar experience.
“He was most certainly one of the fortunate ones," said Epperson. "There are about 75,000 kids in the United States every year that have severe sepsis infections and 7,000 of those succumb to that severe sepsis.”
“Not only was I talking to families about how their loved ones were dying, but their loved ones were actually dying of something that they never heard of,” said Jim O'Brien, an ICU doctor at OhioHealth.
O'Brien joined the Sepsis Alliance 15 years ago. And while he said more people are now aware of sepsis, more awareness is needed for this life-threatening condition which affects people of all ages.
“Your body has an army to fight infections. What happens with sepsis is your body starts suffering friendly fire," said O'Brien. "So someone may have a urinary tract infection for example, and instead of just fighting the infection locally, all of a sudden they have problems breathing, or they wind up with having a low blood pressure or their brain doesn't work well. That's not so much the infection spreading as the response to the infection becoming out of control, and spread throughout the body.”
As for the Eppersons, Nash is now a healthy 10-year-old who just started fifth grade and is playing various sports.
They said it's important to advocate for yourself or loved ones if you know something is not right health-wise.
“It's important to speak up and say, I suspect maybe we're having a sepsis emergency here. And can we do the appropriate test to find out if that's the case,” said Epperson.
When it comes to sepsis, doctors say a good acronym to remember is TIME.
- Temperature: is a person's temperature higher or lower than normal?
- Infection: does the person have signs or symptoms of infection?
- Mental Decline: Is the person confused, sleepy, difficult to rouse?
- Extremely Ill: Does the person have severe pain, discomfort, or shortness of breath?
Keep in mind, that for each hour you lose, the mortality risk increases.