When Beth Bugden fell ill at Christmas, she assumed it was just a harmless cold. But she soon started vomiting a blue liquid and tests at the hospital revealed that suffers not only from the flu, but also from pneumonia, streptococcus A, sepsis – and is on the verge of death, writes a diary.
Beth started feeling sick in mid-December 2022. She was coughing and blowing her nose, but attributed her symptoms to a cold. On Christmas Eve, she and her mother were feeling so miserable that they decided to change their plans at the last minute and she spent the night at her sister Andrea’s.
“It was a decision that saved my life,” Beth described the night during which her condition rapidly deteriorated. She was fighting for her life in hospital at 6am, as families across the UK were pouring over presents.
“I started having excruciating pain in my side and vomiting blue liquid. Andrea called an ambulance in the early hours of the morning, which took me straight to the emergency room,” explained to Beth the circumstances that were the beginning of the painful struggle for life.
At the hospital, Beth was diagnosed with the flu and pneumonia and transferred to the ICU. “By that time I had not passed any urine for 24 hours and they suspected kidney failure. The doctors warned the nurse that things looked much more serious than they had initially thought and they decided to put me in a medically induced coma. All my vital organs failed, I was unresponsive to life support and my family was told to prepare for the worst.” zoomed in.
Doctors found that in addition to the flu and pneumonia, she also has strep A (a common type of bacteria that can cause flu-like symptoms) and has developed sepsis (a life-threatening reaction to an infection). “Within 24 hours I was fighting for my life and as a result I was left with life-changing injuries,” she said.
Beth was in a coma for six weeks. When she woke up, she realized that she would probably lose her legs and possibly her fingers. “I missed Christmas and New Year, and when I recovered, there was a lot on me. They told me that they might have to amputate my legs and maybe my arms,” he mentions.
After that, she could not speak for two months. But when her strength returned, she couldn’t wait to tell her family how much its members meant to her. “My family and friends were traumatized. They were at my bedside the whole time, wishing me to snap out of it. Andrea kept a diary for those six weeks, which later helped me a lot to process what I had missed,” admitted.
Beth she underwent amputation of both legs below the knee and surgery to remove damage to the right lung. Two months later her they removed the thumb and most of the fingers on the right hand, as well as all the fingertips on the left hand. Then her long road to recovery began. Beth now helps spread sepsis awareness.
