A man who developed sepsis due to an ingrown hair was declared brain dead and given a 4% chance of survival.
Steven Spinall was diagnosed with sepsis after contracting an infection while trying to remove an ingrown hair from his groin area. Sun report.
a gofundme A TikTok video shared by his sister Michelle shows their father fighting for his life after being put into a medically induced coma and undergoing open-heart surgery in late 2022.
Sepsis is a life-threatening reaction to an infection that occurs when the immune system overreacts and begins to damage the body’s tissues and organs.
Stephen developed the condition after trying to remove an ingrown hair on his leg and becoming infected.
Michelle said Stephen, then 36, had been very unwell for a month before he was admitted to hospital.
“He was turned away by many hospitals.” [who thought] He was making it up,” she shared in a TikTok clip.
“He started vomiting blood, but they still sent him home.
“The next day, my sister had to call 911 because she couldn’t breathe.”
When Stephen was admitted to the hospital, doctors were perplexed by his symptoms and couldn’t figure out what was causing it.
“All they could figure out was that he was bleeding internally somewhere,” his sister wrote on GoFundMe.
“Little did we know that would be the least of our worries.”
Michelle said doctors discovered that he had a rare bacteria in his bloodstream that was “making all his organs shut down.”
“He deteriorated rapidly and eventually crashed and was placed on life support.
“He was infected with a rare bacteria that ravaged his body and caused all his organs to shut down.”
According to , the bacteria caused Stephen’s body to go into septic shock — when blood pressure drops to dangerously low levels after an infection. NHS information.
Over time, Stephen’s body suffered a series of problems, as he contracted influenza A, developed pneumonia in both lungs, and developed acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which caused his lungs to fail.
Doctors later discovered that a septic bacterial infection had reached his heart and “destroyed it,” Michelle said.
His father also suffered a “mild stroke.”
However, his sister added that his condition was too serious to undergo surgery.
Stephen was intubated (inserting a tube through the nose or mouth into the windpipe to help a patient breathe) and was placed in a medically induced coma.
The heartbroken family were told that Stephen probably would not survive the ordeal, with doctors giving him only a 4 per cent chance of survival.
The family rallied around the father, his sister and wife always by his side.
To treat his ARDS, he was strapped to a rotor bed (a special hospital bed that rotates) for two weeks, causing him to flip over “like a rotisserie chicken,” Michelle said.
open heart surgery
He spent 18 hours each day stretching from his back to his chest to relieve pressure in his fluid-filled lungs and improve oxygen flow.
Stephen also underwent open-heart surgery to repair damage caused by sepsis, and a drain was inserted into his chest to remove excess fluid.
Stephen was in a coma for a month and after multiple treatments, his brain was intact and he is on the road to recovery.
Michelle said his family watched as his “dead, depressed eyes” returned to light.
“Steven has a long road ahead of him, but he’s well on his way,” she wrote on Nov. 29, 2022.
“He’s learning how to sit up on his own, which is amazing.”
Stephen was discharged from hospital in a wheelchair, but was on his way to regaining the ability to walk by the end of 2023.
Michelle captioned the video, adding: “I still remember when they told me Stephen was brain dead and needed to be taken off life support.”
“What a journey.”
This story was originally Sun Reprinted with permission
