How a hospital stay for the flu ended with amputation of both legs

I wrote in worldwide he 3/15/2023 – 7:13 PM

Juliana Bransden, a 44-year-old primary school teacher living in Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK, defines herself as a “normal” and “healthy” person with a “happy life”. This all went on until last New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2022, when she had a normal flu case and went to bed with a bit of the usual fatigue and malaise of a respiratory illness. Which tells the haunting and poignant story It is the British newspaper The Independent.

After going to bed at the turn of the year, Juliana got worse and her condition began to get worse hour by hour, culminating in her hospitalization the next morning, when her husband, Tim Brasden, already tired of asking for public medical support, told him only to give his wife paracetamol, He decided to call an ambulance to get her out.

At Withybush Hospital, Juliana never regained consciousness and continued as if she was “out there”. He fell into a coma and remained that way for 18 days, during which time he fought for his life. Soon she developed septic shock, that is, a very serious generalized infection, which led to a necrotic process in her legs, from the knees down.

With his limbs completely blackened and his life threatened, doctors had no choice but to amputate both his legs. The problem is that her fingers have also darkened and she will probably have to remove them in the next few days. Juliana’s sepsis was so severe and overwhelming that she began suffering from multiple organ failure.

The doctors explained, after much uncertainty and a whirlwind of patient difficulties, that Juliana was in fact suffering from aggressive pneumonia and that this serious, sudden, and aggressive infection was responsible for the frightening progression of the symptoms, leading to sepsis.

The teacher’s mother, Linda Burgess, who accompanies her daughter all the time, since her admission to the hospital, explained that the doctors were surprised by Juliana’s resistance, and above all they were impressed by the positive thinking of the patient, who even in the face of everything that happened is still smiling and behaving optimistically.