My name is Farina, and by the will of God, I survived Sepsis. I would like to share my story so others can recognise the symptoms and get the right treatment ASAP.

On 11th August 2025, I woke up with slight body ache. I felt a little tired and run down, but just thought I slept badly. I carried on with my day as normal and went into work. When I returned from work, I felt extremely tired and went to sleep. When I woke up, I started getting slight shivers and a low fever. At this point I just thought I was coming down with some sort of cold/flu. I had dinner, took some paracetamol and tried to sleep it off.

At around midnight, I woke up, and vomited. At this point, I started to get a slight ache in the right side of my back. Again, I didn’t think much of it as it wasn’t very painful. Throughout the night, my fever kept increasing despite alternating paracetamol and ibuprofen every 4-6 hours and using cold towels, taking cold showers and having the fan on constantly. My fever climbed over night and hit 39.9 degrees and I was shivering a lot.

At 6am, my husband decided to call 111 who advised us to get an emergency appointment with the GP. By 10am, I was with the GP, and presented with a 40.5 degrees fever and extremely high heart rate (131 bpm). At this point he said I might have sepsis and sent me straight to the hospital with a note with a summary of his assessment.

I got to the hospital and they confirmed I had sepsis, but were still identifying the root cause. After many tests and scans, I was told I had a severe kidney infection which was likely caused by a silent Urinary Tract Infection. I was immediately connected to a drip, and antibiotics were started. The next 24-48 hours were the roughest. The doctors were telling me I wasn’t out of the woods, that I may need to go to ICU and they weren’t sure it could be treated. In fact, one doctor was shocked to see me sitting up and talking, and said my blood markers reflected someone who should be unconscious. The temperature was not coming down, I was shivering uncontrollably and the pain in the kidney was getting worse. It all felt like a blur and I asked my husband “Am I going to die?”. He held my hand and reassured me everything was going to be ok.

I was admitted onto the ward and was on a cocktail of medicines. I was becoming really weak and wasn’t even able to get up from the bed to use the toilet by myself. The amazing nurses and health care assistants monitored me closely every hour and kept my spirits up.

After 48 hours I finally started to make progress. Slowly my fever and heart rate started to stabilise and I began to feel better. After 5 days in hospital, I was finally discharged with a further course of antibiotics at home. I was told by the doctors that we caught it just in time, as I was not far off septic shock (when organs begin to fail). This totally shook me, and I am so thankful to God that my husband took the initiative to call 111 and that the GP identified Sepsis straight away. Not everyone is that lucky.

Sepsis is a life-threatening reaction to an infection. It happens when your immune system overreacts to an infection and starts to damage your body's own tissues and organs. Far too often, Sepsis gets missed or mistaken for other less serious infections, and consequently leads to the loss of precious lives. When in doubt, ask yourself “Is it sepsis?” - it could really save your / your loved one’s life. Here are some of the key symptoms:

This month I will be turning 30 (God-willing) and I feel incredibly blessed to have made it through Sepsis, especially without any major long-term effects. That’s why I have challenged myself to walk 3 miles a day for a month. Anyone who knows me knows exercise and I have a very distant relationship! But I really wanted to do something important to celebrate my milestone birthday. Please donate to help raise awareness of Sepsis and help save lives!