Sepsis: the red flag symptoms that led me to call an ambulance - Gaby Soutar

Earlier this week, Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay was applauded as he returned to the Commons, wearing his new prosthetic limbs.

In September 2023, he developed septic shock and, after his forearms and legs turned black, they were amputated. Now he’s thanked the NHS and dubbed himself the first “bionic MP”.

I watched him discuss the experience on telly, and it sounded as if he’d only been mildly unwell the day before the illness escalated.

In the night, he was sick and his wife – a pharmacist – couldn’t find a pulse in his arm. When seeking medical advice, they were told to see their GP, but, recognising the red flag symptoms, she pushed for urgent care and he was taken to hospital

Sepsis spelt out Pic: Adobe

Mackinlay had septic shock and nearly died. Well done to his other half, for knowing the signs. Not many do.

This is a non-infectious condition that’s rarely discussed, though 245,000 people are affected and 48,000 in the UK die of it every year. That’s five every hour. According to The UK Sepsis Trust website, this toll is more than breast, bowel and prostate cancer combined.

About three in ten patients with severe sepsis die, and septic shock – the advanced variety, which involves a dramatic drop in blood pressure – is fatal for half of sufferers.

This is a slippery disease that takes hold while you’re distracted by other things.

It always starts with an infection, like one in your lungs, kidney, bladder, digestive tract or a wound. If your immune system overreacts by going into overdrive, then begins to attack your organs and tissues, it’s sepsis, otherwise known as septicaemia or blood poisoning.

The common symptoms for adults are slurred speech and confusion, shivering or muscle pain, passing no urine, severe breathlessness, and mottled or discoloured skin.

Two years ago this June, I was completely blindsided when my mum developed this condition. In her case, it was triggered by a common UTI. This infection had affected her badly and she was weak and slightly delirious, but that’s quite usual in older adults and she’s well into her 80s.

I was the only one in the family available to look after her, so I bunked at her house. I’m no Florence Nightingale, but she’s a very easy patient.

I worked downstairs and brought up meals on trays, delivered cups of tea and helped her to the loo. We kept checking in with her GP, who seemed relatively unconcerned. It was just a case of waiting until the infection passed.

She had antibiotics and Paracetamol. There was gradual improvement. She was getting irritated by me nagging her to drink water, which seemed like a positive sign.

Still, I kept creeping through to her room in the night, just to check she was still breathing. I thought the more vigilant I could be, the quicker she’d recover, but it didn’t work out like that.

On day three, things started to go swiftly downhill. She didn’t want to eat or drink, had urinary retention and started vomiting. I have NEVER seen her be sick, but there I was, clutching the nearest waste paper basket. This is a woman – one of the stoic Silent Generation – who cuts the mould off food before eating it and snubs ‘use by’ dates. She has a stomach of steel.

She was also shivering quite violently, and, though it was early summer, I couldn’t work out if she was hot or cold. I decided on the latter and tucked her under the duvet.

Then she started complaining about coloured lights. When she closed her eyes, it was like a disco. To be honest, my alarm bells weren’t ringing yet. Those symptoms seemed benign and vague. It was just the UTI.

Her carers didn’t seem worried either. Still, I eventually phoned 111, just to be sure. It didn’t seem like a 999 sort of thing.

I nearly didn’t bother. I’m prone to catastrophising, and found it difficult to gauge how serious things were. I wished that my late dad, who was a GP, was still around to tell me what to do. However, I’d done a bit of panicked Googling. Although she didn’t have mottled skin or breathlessness, the word sepsis was appearing in the search results.

Despite that, I thought they’d say it was fine and that we could go back to the soup and tea regimen. They didn’t. An ambulance came quickly. They bumped her downstairs in a wheelchair and into the back of the vehicle.

It’s only then that I realised how zoned out she was. I don’t think she had any clue what was going on. Just as well, or she might not have been too happy about all the neighbours seeing her in her nightie.

To this day, she remembers nothing of this illness. I, also, struggle to recall the event. My brain has boxed the experience up, and filed it with other blissfully hard-to-recall bad memories.

I really thought, when they took her away to Borders General Hospital and I was left on the doorstep, as Covid rules were still in place, that it was The End.

She was later transferred to Edinburgh’s Western General and spent weeks in intensive care, with her blood pressure bouncing all over the place. There were a few dark moments when we wondered if she was ever going to leave.

But she did come home and made a full recovery, though 40 per cent of sepsis patients are left with long-term physical, psychological and cognitive after effects. It scares me that I was so close to not making that phone call. I knew so little about the killer that is sepsis.

And I don’t think I’m the only one.