sepsis

Getting Over It

Over the years, I’ve received loads of emails and messages from people who were grateful that I taught them about sepsis. They’d never heard of it and now know it exists. Maybe that knowledge could save a life. So, why is it that I can recite by heart the one negative email I got?

September

It’s difficult to get attention for a cause. When something like the Ice Bucket Challenge catches on, it’s so gratifying for the charity – in this case, defeating ALS. It’s hard to get momentum, to capture peoples’ attention, and every cause is worthy. September is Sepsis Awareness month and there’s actually some good news on the sepsis front.  …

Throwback Thursday – Sepsis Days

I  am really late to the story here, but I was reluctant to write about Muhammad Ali because, besides the obvious loss of a legend, his was another death attributable to sepsis, the disease that nearly KOd me several years ago. In his case, it was septic shock, meaning severe sepsis that doesn’t respond to treatment. Sepsis gets “severe” when it starts to affect internal organs, as it did with my liver.  …

World Sepsis Day

As you may know, I’m one of Canada’s advocates for spreading the word about sepsis. As a survivor of it, I’ve gotten to know the major organizations fighting to get the illness recognized by world health bodies, and to have World Sepsis Day, September 13, endorsed as an official day to alert even more people to this potentially – and often – fatal infection in the blood. …

Work With Me, Baby

I’ve needed to get my picture taken recently. Once was for an upcoming Globe and Mail article about how and why doctors sometimes misdiagnose patients, the consequences. and some theories about how the medical profession can reduce the number of times it happens. The other for my new job at CJBK. And they were very different experiences! …

Yesterday Was What Day?

**This blog post originally appeared on the Blackburn News website:

Sepsis. It doesn’t have a wristband or a colour of its own. There are no runs or telethons for it. And yet statistically it’s deadlier than heart disease, stroke and many other well-known illnesses. Every 3-4 seconds someone in the world dies from sepsis. And 3 years ago, I was almost one of them.  …